ABSTRACT
It was just before dawn on 17 September 1868 when the Cheyenne cutting-out party swept down on the white scouts’ camp on the banks of the Arickaree River in eastern Colorado Territory. There were only three or four of the raiders, young men who had defied their elders and gone off to steal the white men’s horses despite threats of a beating.1 They came from a big Cheyenne camp about twelve miles upstream, to which a few Brulé Sioux and Northern Arapahos had attached themselves. The raid didn’t amount to much: only seven horses and two mules were driven off by the yipping, blanket-waving youths. But the commotion caused by the cutting-out party would make sure that the fifty-one scouts, who had slept on their arms that night, would be up and about when the big attack came a few minutes later.2
