Battle of Solomon's Fork
| Battle of Solomon's Fork | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The river where the Battle of Solomon's Fork took place | |||||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||||
| United States Army | Northern Cheyenne | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 500 soldiers | 300 warriors | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 2 dead, 8 wounded | 4 dead, 1 captured (later escaped) | ||||||||
The Battle of Solomon’s Fork was a brief skirmish between Cheyenne warriors and a cavalry detachment of the United States Army that occurred on July 9, 1857, on the Solomon Fork of the Smoky Hill River in north-central Kansas Territory, near present-day Penokee. A punitive expedition led by Colonel Edwin "Bull" Sumner had been pursuing the Cheyenne since May in retaliation for attacks on emigrant wagon trains. A portion of Sumner's forces finally discovered a large Cheyenne war party waiting for them on the river's north bank. The cavalry charged and routed the Cheyenne, dispersing them in multiple directions, with several combatants killed on each side. The Army continued to pursue these fragmented groups from July 29 until August 18.
Being a relatively minor action, this battle is not well known by the general public, and historians debate its importance. Some say that this particular skirmish was a critical event in the history of conflict between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, while others have argued that it was merely one of hundreds of similar incidents in the white man's long, cumulative effort to dispossess the natives of their homelands.