Black Kettle

Black Kettle d. 1868, chief of the southern Cheyenne in Colorado. His attempt to make peace (1864) with the white men ended in the massacre of about half his people at Sand Creek . Despite this treachery on the part of the whites, he continued to seek peace with them, and in 1865 he signed the Treaty of the Little Arkansas. The government ignored its guarantees, and Black Kettle tried again to negotiate, signing the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867. The Cheyenne might have retired to the reservation provided for them, had it not been for Gen. George Armstrong Custer. On Nov. 27, 1868, Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's camp on the Washita River without warning and killed the chief and hundreds of Native Americans.

Black Kettle (1807?–68) Cheyenne chief. Black Kettle (Me-tu-ra-to or Moka-ta-va-tah in Cheyenne) served as a scout and warrior in combat with neighboring tribes. He was the principal chief during the 1861 treaty negotiations at Fort Wise, Colorado, where he accepted an American flag during the negotiations, symbolically accepting the notion of peace with white America. After the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, where Black Kettle was shot more than eight times and more than 100 Cheyenne were murdered and mutilated, the remaining Cheyenne (and especially the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers) were distrustful of Black Kettle, who still called for peace with whites. He continued to negotiate with whites, returning hostages, and worked to achieve full agreement of his tribe to another treaty in 1867 which restricted the Cheyenne to a reservation in Indian Territory. The U.S. Army continued to violate the treaty and ignore Black Kettle's peacemaking efforts; Black Kettle and his wife were killed nearly four years to the day after the Sand Creek massacre. They were shot in the back while trying to flee Gen. George Amstrong Custer's dawn attack of their village.

The day after the battle, survivors hid Black Kettle's body; in 1934, a skeleton wearing his jewelry was found by Works Progress Administration workers trying to stabilize a bridge over the Washita River.