In May of 1869, some Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, led by Tall Bull, were on the warpath along the Solomon River in Kansas. They abducted two women; Mrs. Susanna Zigler Daily Alderdice and Mrs. Maria Weichel, a German immigrant. The Indians rode off with their captives, leaving behind Mrs. Weichel’s husband and Mrs. Alderdice’s baby. Both were dead.

In June, General Eugene Carr’s Cavalry rode in pursuit of these raiders and their white captives. With Carr’s command were Buffalo Bill Cody as chief civilian scout and three companies of Pawnee scouts led by Major Frank North and his brother Luther.

Buffalo Bill Cody

In July, Carr’s forces picked up Tall Bull’s trail that wound upstream along the Republican River. Carr’s trackers were certain that the Indians still had the two white women with them. Wherever the Indians had camped, there were imprints of a woman’s shoe.

On July 10, the soldiers discovered two of Tall Bull’s empty campsites. That night the Army camped on the site of a third Indian campground. Carr was certain that the end of the trail was near. And certainly, as Cody discovered the following day, Carr’s troopers were within mere miles of where the Indians were camped at a place called Summit Springs in the Sand Hills south of the South Platte River.

General Eugene A. Carr

At 2 o’clock that afternoon the Kansas wind was blowing such a gale that Tall Bull and his warriors never saw nor heard Carr coming. His command’s charge through the Indian village was a total surprise. Afterwards, fifty-two of Tall Bull’s warriors lay dead. Not one of Carr’s men were lost.

Tall Bull was killed in this attack. There were several claims to, and versions of, the Cheyenne’s death. Luther North declared that his brother Frank had had the honor. Cody made the same claim, with there being at least two variations of the incident. One of these versions has Tall Bull’s wife identifying his horse, then killing one of the white women captives.

The facts were, that Tall Bull was dead, as was Mrs. Alderdice. A tomahawk had smashed her skull. The other woman, Mrs. Weichel, though wounded, was rescued and later recovered.

In The Sioux Indian Wars is a letter written by J.E. Welch, a trooper in Carr’s command during this battle. Welch’s letter hopefully causes one to pause and reflect when he relates that the Army took “one hundred and seventeen prisoners, four squaws, and fifteen children. They were turned over to the Pawnees” who were Carr’s scouts. The Pawnees “killed the women and children.”

Indian Army Scouts

Welch goes on to say that they buried “the poor [white] woman they [the Indians] had murdered.” Then he expresses his view that it is “as impossible to make a civilized man of the Indian as it would be to make a shepherd dog of a wolf.” This seemed to be the general opinion towards the Indians on the Southern Plains as well.