The Way West

The spring of 1874 was an uneasy season for settlers on the southern Kansas frontier.

The Comanches attacked Kansas buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls in late June. The hunters who were illegally hunting below the Kansa border relied upon their long-range rifles to repel the all-out attack and three-day siege.

On July 2, 1874, rumors that Indians were following the warpath frightened settlers along Cowskin Creek, just beyond Wichita. Panicked families swarmed into Wichita with hastily loaded wagons. Settlers from farther away arrived the next day only to discover there were no Indians in the county.

However, on July 4, just as settlers were returning home, a small wagon train was attacked in Indian Territory. The bodies of freighter Pat Hennesey and two men in his employ were found along the Chisholm Trail on July 6, 1874. A Cheyenne war party was suspected.

The news forced the Laflin freighting company to circle its wagons. A messenger rode to Caldwell while the freighters prepared for an attack. At Caldwell 20 well-armed men started down the trail to relieve the wagon train the evening of July 7.

The Wichita City Eagle of July 9, 1874, reported,“Bands of murdering, thieving red devils have been scouring the country between Ft. Sill, in the Indian Territory, and Ft. Dodge, on the Arkansas river ...”

The report claimed that four or five men and one boy had been killed in the past three months, citing “murders committed on the Medicine Lodge river and near Ft. Dodge.”

The “scare” was heightened by the news of the Hennessey massacre. The freighters had just left Wichita 10 days before, “their teams loaded for Fort Sill.” Another man, the brother-in-law of Wichita’s Joe Hooker was believed killed near the state line and Hooker was on the trail “to ascertain the facts.”

The Wichita paper further reported that “The country is full of rumors which grow into frightful stories, and the further one is from any actual danger, the more bloody and sanguine are the tales doled out.”

Meanwhile, the scare quickly spread along the frontier.

The morning of July 7, the day after Hennessey was found, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Robinson awoke to find a throng of people passing by their humble prairie home. Mrs. Robinson later recalled that day on Shoo Fly Creek (present-day South Haven, Kan.), “... people were passing, driving their stock before them and their wagons loaded with such household goods as they could load on.”

Panic filled the air. Everyone was in “a great hurry” to get away. They carried “news” that the Indians were to the west at Caldwell, murdering and scalping settlers. With only a single ox team to carry them and their possessions, the Robinsons resigned to stay and face the consequences.

Rather than face a fight with their slowmoving team on the open prairie the Robinsons and five other families “forted up” in the largest house in the community and waited.

North of the Robinsons, setters were streaming into Wellington. Several companies of armed men were organized to meet the approaching warriors. All expected a great Indian war.

The Eagle editor almost seemed to relish the idea.

“The only way to deal with an Indian when found off the reservation is to kill him. There is no good in them. It is an Indian’s ambition — his whole life’s desire, to murder and steal ... Their destiny is extinction and the quicker it is done the better for all concerned.”

Armed men went out on the trail. Companies drilled and waited, but the hated “red devil” failed to show. Evidence at the scene of the Hennessey murders strongly suggested the vile dead was done by men in high healed boots. On Cowskin Creek, rumors of Indians lurking about were spread by a known horse thief, Hurricane Bill Martin. The plan was to steal the livestock left behind by fleeing settlers. However, Martin overplayed his hand in Wichita and was thrown in jail just as the Indian scare was unfolding on July 6.

Down on Shoo Fly Creek the Robinsons heard that the horse thieves had been hanged. That story apparently originated at Guelph, Kan., where an unnamed Texas man spread stories of marauding Indians. According to the Arkansas City Traveler, some local men took him for a jaunt “where the woodbine twineth,”

Ultimately, outlaws proved more of a threat to settlers than Indians. At the Eagle, the editor had to admit that the big Indian war was nothing more than a little “scare” on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.