At dawn on November 27, 1868, Custer's 7th Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne village here, killing over 100 people. The NPS site preserves the landscape and tells the Cheyenne account.
18555 OK-47A, Cheyenne, OK 73628
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission to the visitor center and grounds as a National Park Service site.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Visitor center is accessible; the 2-mile interpretive trail over the rolling battlefield involves some uneven ground.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1868 · November 27, 1868 — Army surprise attack on Southern Cheyenne peace village of Black Kettle · Black Kettle, his wife, and over 100 villagers killed — including women and children · Cheyenne and tribal historians classify the attack as a massacre · Black Kettle had survived the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and advocated for peace · National Park Service site established 1996 with Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes involvement
Black Kettle had spent years working toward accommodation with the United States government. He was present at the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, where Colonel John Chivington's troops attacked his village and killed an estimated 150-200 people. Surviving that attack, Black Kettle continued to advocate for a peaceful settlement and signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, which assigned his band to a reservation in Indian Territory.
By autumn 1868, the U.S. Army's Department of the Missouri had launched a winter campaign against Southern Plains tribes, ordered by General Philip Sheridan. Custer's 7th Cavalry tracked a trail of a raiding party back toward the Washita River valley, where multiple Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche villages were camped for the winter. Custer chose to attack the nearest village — Black Kettle's — at dawn on November 27.
The four-column assault caught the village while most people slept. Black Kettle and his wife were shot while attempting to flee on horseback into the river. Custer's official report claimed 103 warriors killed, but NPS interpretation, drawing on Cheyenne oral histories and Bent's Fort accounts, estimates the dead included many women and children. The exact number remains contested between military records and tribal accounts. The NPS accepts both narratives rather than reconciling them into a single official count.
The attack was controversial even in 1868. Custer's subordinate Captain Frederick Benteen wrote critically of abandoning wounded soldiers who had pursued fleeing villagers downstream into a gauntlet of warriors from other encampments. Custer received recognition from Sheridan but the engagement entered the historical record as a site of significant moral complexity.
The National Park Service designated Washita Battlefield a National Historic Site in 1996. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes were central to the site's development and the NPS interpretation explicitly presents the attack as Cheyenne and tribal historians view it. The 1,578-acre protected landscape includes the river channel and bottomland cottonwoods where the village stood.
Sources
There is no established paranormal narrative at Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, and none is appropriate here. The site is a place of documented atrocity and ongoing cultural significance to the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, whose tribal members consider it a memorial landscape.
Black Kettle survived the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre only to be killed at Washita four years later while continuing to seek a peaceful resolution with the U.S. government. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes were directly involved in the development of the NPS interpretive program, and the site's interpretation centers their perspective. The historical record — not paranormal lore — is what makes Washita significant as a dark-history site.
Visitors seeking to understand the site's meaning should engage with the visitor center film, the interpretive trail, and the ranger programs, all of which address the complexity of the event and its place in Cheyenne history.
Notable Entities
Where this legend is told
A 2-mile trail with 27 interpretive signs crosses the preserved Washita River bottomland where the November 27, 1868 attack occurred. The visitor center shows a 27-minute film that presents Cheyenne oral history alongside military records. The NPS interpretation centers the Cheyenne account of a surprise attack on a peace-seeking village.
Seasonal ranger talks and educational programs at the visitor center present the history of the Southern Cheyenne, the Washita attack, and its aftermath for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people. Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes cultural liaisons occasionally participate.
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