Talk:Battle of Washita River/Sandbox

'''This sandbox is for adding drafts of proposed new material for the Battle of Washita article. Best practice might be to draft any new sections in a sandbox in your own userspace, and adding them here only when they are complete. Please feel free to copyedit or make improvements to what you find here. Sections can be removed from this sandbox as they are added to the main article.'''

Citations go with References in the References proposal.

Background
The Sand Creek Massacre resulted in a heavy loss of life and material possessions by the Cheyenne and Arapaho bands camped at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864. It also devastated the Cheyenne's traditional government, due to the deaths at Sand Creek of eight of 44 members of the Council of Forty-four as well as headmen of some of the Cheyenne's military societies. Among the chiefs killed were most of those who had advocated peace with white settlers and the U.S. government. The effect was to exacerbate the social and political rift between the traditional council chiefs and their followers on the one hand and the militaristic Dog Soldiers on the other. Beginning in the 1830s, the Dog Soldiers had evolved from the Cheyenne military society of the same name into a separate band of Cheyenne and Lakota warriors that took as its territory the headwaters country of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers in southern Nebraska, northern Kansas, and the northeast of Colorado Territory. By the 1860s, as conflict between Indians and encroaching whites intensified, the influence wielded by the Dog Soldiers, together with that of the military societies within other Cheyenne bands, had become a significant counter to the influence of the traditional Council of Forty-four chiefs, who were more likely to favor peace with the whites. To the Dog Soldiers, the Sand Creek Massacre illustrated the folly of the peace chiefs' policy of accommodating the whites through the signing of treaties such as the first Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 and the Treaty of Fort Wise in 1861 and vindicated the Dog Soldiers' own militant posture towards the whites, which in 1865 took the form of retaliatory warfare against white settlements and stations along the North Platte River. The next two years were marked by alternating periods of warfare and peacemaking efforts, including the Treaty of the Little Arkansas of October 14, 1865 (ratified by the U.S. Senate on May 22, 1866 and proclaimed February 2, 1867), the Hancock expedition of spring 1867, and the Medicine Lodge Treaty of October 1868.

Medicine Lodge Treaty
After the signing of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes moved to Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) to be in their new reservation. ....

Indian raids
In the summer of 1868, after months of fragile peace (with raids between Kaw Indians and Cheyennes), white settlements in western Kansas, southeast Colorado, and northwest Texas were hit by raids from by war parties of Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Northern Cheyenne, Brulé and Oglala Lakota, and Pawnee warriors. Among these raids were those along the Solomon and Saline rivers in Kansas, commencing on August 10, 1868, during which at least 15 white settlers were killed, others wounded, and some women raped or taken captive.

On August 19, 1868, Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop, Indian Agent for the Cheyennes and Arapahoes at Fort Lyon, Kansas, interviewed Little Rock, who was a chief in Black Kettle's Cheyenne village. Little Rock gave an account of what he had learned about the raids along the Saline and Solomon rivers. According to Little Rock's account, a war party of about 200 Cheyennes from a camp above the forks of Walnut Creek departed camp intending to go out against the Pawnees, but ended up raiding white settlements along the Saline and Solomon rivers instead. Some of those responsible for the raids came to Black Kettle's camp, and from them Little Rock had learned what had happened. He named the men most responsible for the raids as being Oh-e-ah-mo-he-a (or He Who Breaks the Marrow Bones), brother of White Antelope who had been killed at Sand Creek; Medicine Arrow's oldest son, Tall Wolf; the Dog Soldier Red Nose; Big Head's son Porcupine Bear; and Sand Hill's brother, Bear That Goes Ahead. Little Rock agreed to do his best to have the guilty parties delivered to white authorities. Several months later, Edmund Guerrier, a half-blood of French and Cheyenne parentage who was living with his Little Rock's band where it was encamped on Buckner's Fork of the Pawnee River at the time of the raids, gave an affidavit to the U.S. military which corroborated Little Rock's account. Guerrier said the war party was made up of young men from the bands of Black Kettle, Little Rock, the Dog Soldier leader Bull Bear, and Medicine Arrows, and that "nearly all the different bands of Cheyennes had some of their young men in this war party." He identified Red Nose of the Dog Soldiers and Ho-eh-a-mo-a-ha of Black Kettle's band as the leaders of the massacre.

Indians in November 1868
''Material added to article on 10 August 2007, per consensus on the talk page. --Yksin 19:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)''

Indian casualties at the Washita
Material added to article on 12 August 2007, per consensus on the talk page. --Yksin 03:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Modern reactions
''Material added to article on 21 August 2007, per consensus on the talk page. --Yksin 18:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)''