Indian Treaties of 1865

The signers in October 1865 included Black Kettle, whose band had been attacked at Sand Creek the year before, the Arapaho Little Raven, Ten Bears of the Comanche and Satanta of the Kiowa. Kit Carson and William Bent sat among the federal commissioners. The tribes asked for open hunting grounds and reparation for Chivington's attack on Black Kettle's band; the government wanted untroubled traffic on the Santa Fe Trail. The treaties promised reservations south of the Arkansas that were never created. Captives released at the council included a Texas woman and four children of the Box family.

What the plaque says

Indian Treaties of 1865 Hundreds of Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, Apaches, and Comanches camped not far from here in 1865 to negotiate peace with the U.S. government. Both sides at the Little Arkansas council hoped their new treaties would put an end to the hostilities. Less than a year earlier, a Colorado volunteer militia had attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village near Sand Creek, Colorado, slaughtering about 400 men, women, and children. "My people have never first drawn a bow or fired a gun against whites. There has been trouble on the line between us, and my young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us." - Ten Bears, Comanche Although the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the agreements, the peace held for about 18 months until Gen. Winfield Hancock led 1,400 soldiers from Fort Larned on a campaign against the Cheyennes and Arapahos. Two years after the Little Arkansas council, the same parties signed new treaties at Medicine Lodge Creek, 76 miles southwest of here. Those agreements also failed to stop the wars on the plains. Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Cowtown Museum — 7.4 mi
  Wichita's open-air museum of its 1865 to 1880 years, begun in 1950 to save a first church found inside a rooming house, in a city that was never sure it wanted to be called a cowtown.
• Keeper of the Plains — 7.5 mi
  Blackbear Bosin's 44-foot steel figure on the point where the Little Arkansas meets the Arkansas, the ground where Wichita refugees built grass houses in 1864.
• Kauffman Museum — 19 mi
  Bethel College's museum in North Newton of the Mennonites who settled the central plains in the 1870s, home to the copper plates of the 1685 Martyrs Mirror.

More markers nearby

• Towanda - Land of Many Waters — 19 mi
• Turkey Red Wheat — 23 mi