Kidder Massacre Historic Site
Kidder Massacre Historic Site
Location: From Goodland on I-70, go east to the Edson exit (Exit 27). From Edson, travel 1 mile west, then 12 miles north on 28th Road (the Bird City/Edson Road). Marker is on the east side of the gravel road just south of Beaver Creek.
Nearest Towns: Goodland, Edson, Bird City
Images Copyright Harland J Schuster. Do not use without permission.
A simple marker on a lonely road in northwest Kansas bears mute testimony to a short but fierce battle between the US Calvary and the Indians, part of the "Indian Wars" which took place for about a decade after the end of the Civil War. The year was 1867, and a small 10 man detachment of the US Calvary, plus their Sioux Indian Scout, lead by Lt. Lyman Kidder, were riding hard to deliver orders to General Armstrong Custer, who with his 7th Calvary was believed to be camped near present day Benkleman, NE. Unfortunately, upon reaching that location they found Custer's camp had been abandoned days earlier. Lt. Kidder incorrectly assumed that Custer had moved his 1100 man force to Ft. Wallace, located 80 miles south of Custer's abandoned camp on the Republican River. Kidder then made the fateful decision to head to Ft. Wallace. Near Beaver Creek, where the present-day road makes a sharp jog, Kidder's patrol came under attack of a large Cheyenne war party.
When Kidder's patrol came under fire, they apparently headed east along Beaver Creek (pictured, right), and conducted a running battle for about a mile to a dry ravine north of the creek, then took up a defensive position. But the small force was soon overwhelmed and killed to the last man.
Days later, upon hearing of the missing patrol, and fearing the worst, Custer lead a search party to backtrack his trail. On July 12 they found what was left of the Kidder patrol. As was common a practice of both sides in this conflict, the dead had been defiled. Except for the Indian scout, the men had been scalped and their bodies were partial burned. Custer ordered the bodies to be buried in a common grave on the hill overlooking the ravine where the men had fought and died. In February of 1868, Lt. Kidder's father, a judge from St. Paul Minnesota, arrived in Ft. Wallace hoping to claim his son's remains. A detail from Ft. Wallace, under the command of Lt. Beecher, proceeded north to the site of the common grave. They found the grave had been desecrated, but Judge Kidder was able to identify his son's remains by a scrap of cloth on the body, a shirt his mother had made for him. The remaining bodies were disinterred and buried in the Ft. Wallace cemetery, later being moved to the Ft. Leavenworth cemetery when Ft. Wallace was abandoned a few years later. As for General Custer, his date with destiny had not yet arrived. Less than ten years later, on a hill overlooking the valley of the Little Big Horn river in Montana, however, he would meet a similar fate in a somewhat larger and far more famous battle.
It's a hot, windy August day when I visit the site. I pondered the plight of Kidder's small party. They were fighting for their lives by the time they reached this point. Men, just boys really, scared and far from home knowing they would soon die at the hands of a merciless enemy. As I stood there looking north across the Beaver Creek valley towards the dry ravine where Kidder's men fought their last battle, a whirlwind formed and crossed the field just north of the road kicking up the dust and picking up bits of wheat straw as it headed northeast and out of view. Just a dust devil; common enough out here on the plains of western Kansas. Just a dust devil...or was it dust stirred up by the hooves from the phantom horses of Kidder's lost patrol as they sped by...