U
nder a bright, high sun in a pale blue
Midwestern sky, six companies of
the United States Cavalry’s 1st Reg-
iment rode into a grassy valley bor-
dering the south fork of the Solomon River
in northwestern Kansas on the afternoon
of July 29, 1857. Two miles away, unseen
and unsensed, a party of 300 Cheyenne
warriors waited silently on horseback amid
a thin stand of cotton trees. They were
planning to attack the unsuspecting
Veho—white men—as soon as they got
close enough to shoot. For the warlike
Cheyenne, the hot summer day in the
Moon-When-the-Buffalo-Are-Rutting was“a good day to die.” Most days were for
the fearless Cheyenne, who were born and
bred for battle. Few warriors lived to ripe
old age—or wanted to. Death in battle was
their greatest glory.
The Cheyenne were even more embold-
ened that day by the powerful magic that
their two young medicine men, Ice and
Dark, had worked on them that morning.
Their old-fashioned Allen revolvers had
been loaded with magical gunpowder that
would make it impossible for them to miss,and to further add to their medicine they
had dipped their hands into a sacred lake
whose waters would cause the white men’s
bullets to drop harmlessly at their feet. So
confident were the Cheyenne of victory
that they had even allowed a group of
teenage boys to accompany them and wit-
ness the Vehos’ defeat. One of the boys, an
Oglala Sioux called Curley, would never
forget what he saw that day. In a few years,
under the warrior name Crazy Horse, he
too would fight the white men. But today,
as a guest, he politely stood aside, silent and
watchful, as his Cheyenne friends prepared
for battle.
Another young man destined for fame
and bearing, like Curley, the boyish nick-
name “Beauty,” galloped at the head of
Company G, 1st U.S. Cavalry. His name
was James Ewell Brown Stuart, a native-
born Virginian and a graduate of the
United States Military Academy at WestPoint (Class of 1854). Stuart and his com-
rades had been tracking the Cheyenne for
2½ months across four states in broiling
sun and pelting rain. Now they had
caught up with them, although the troop-
ers didn’t pause to wonder why the nor-
mally elusive Indians had suddenly
allowed themselves to be cornered.
Instead, with the warriors shouting their
war cries and the soldiers answering with
a great shout of their own, the two sides
drew ever closer. The booming voice ofthe regiment’s commander, Colonel Edwin
Vose Sumner, rose above the others.
“Draw sabers!” he shouted. “Charge!”
As Stuart and the others lowered their
blades to tierce point, preparing to charge,
the Cheyenne beheld a glittering steel for-
est slanting directly toward them. The
Cheyenne, like other Plains Indians, feared
no man in battle, but their medicine hadn’t
prepared them to withstand the soldiers’
long knives. Perhaps it was a sign from
Maheo, the Sacred One, that they were not
intended to fight that day. With the oncom-
ing soldiers less than 100 yards away, the
warriors broke ranks and scattered
unapologetically into the hills. They would
live to fight another day.
Stuart and his comrades followed in close
pursuit, chasing the Indians like so many
random dogies, or loose cattle, while the
warriors made a life-or-death dash across
the river. When Stuart’s horse broke down,he hailed a private and commandeered his
mount. Rank had its privileges. With a
shout, Stuart raced after Captain James
McIntosh and Lieutenants Lunsford
Lomax, David Stanley, and James McIn-
tyre, who had cornered a lone Cheyenne
warrior armed with a decrepit Allen
revolver. The warrior aimed his weapon at
Lomax, and Stuart charged forward and
shot the Indian in the thigh. The Cheyenne
staggered from the blow.
Shouting, “Wait, I’ll fetch him!” StanleySecretary of War Jefferson Davis lobbied long and hard
for the creation of two new cavalry regiments. The
handpicked 1st and 2nd Cavalry were a veritable Who’s
Who of future Civil War generals. BY COWAN BREW
Jeff Davis
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