Eayre Attacks Cheyennes, Kills Lean Bear, 1864 |
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In May, 1864, Colonel John M. Chivington ordered Lieutenant George
S Eayre into Kansas from Denver, with an eighty-four man detachment
to burn villages and kill Indians after the murder of a family near
Denver by Northern Arapaho. They came upon a large Cheyenne buffalo
hunt on the Smoky Hill River led by Lean Bear. This chief had visited
with Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. a year earlier. When the troops
were spotted, he and another Cheyenne named Star rode out with the intention
of displaying a letter from the president stating that they were friendly
Indians but as they approached Eayre's command they were gunned from
their ponies. It was the people of Kansas, not Colorado, who suffered
the repercussions for this murder as the Cheyennes struck transportation
lines and settlements throughout the state that summer.
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