Augut 1, 1864; Ulysses, Kansas:After killing a sentry at Fort Larned and stealing horses from the fort's herd on 17 July, Kiowas under Satank and Satanta moved west, striking at any convenient targets along the way. At the Cimarron Crossing of the Arkansas River in late July, they attacked a stage and killed two men. Then, on 1 August, about seventy Comanches and Kiowas approached a small wagon train camped at Lower Cimarron Springs (also called Wagon Bed Spring, where mountain man Jedediah Smith had been killed by Comanches in 1831), about ten miles south of present-day Ulysses, Kansas. The Indians approached the train, owned by a Mr. Allison, in a friendly manner and asked for food. Then, without warning, they attacked.
The Indians killed Allison and the four other Americans in the party, but they spared the lives of the Mexican teamsters, saying they had no quarrel with them. They left the Mexicans one wagon and a yoke of oxen and told them to leave the area, Thankful for their lives, the Mexicans hurried west on the Santa Fe Trail. Near the Canadian River, Capt. Nicholas S. Davis of the First California Infantry encountered the Mexican teamsters, who told him what had happened. They said that the Indians warned "they would kill every white man that came on the road." Davis proceeded to Wagon Bed Spring and buried the bodies of the five Americans.
