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During the early years of settlement, while Kansas was a territory, little trouble with the Indians was experienced. A few depredations were committed by some of the tribes, but none of them was of sufficient magnitude to cause serious alarm. Colonel Edwin V. Sumner led an expedition into the Indian country in 1857 in which he and his troops were involved in the Battle of Solomon Fork in in Graham County in July. In the spring of 1859 a battle was fought on Crooked Creek, near the southwest corner of the present Ford County. The action was an incident of the Washita Expedition, which was under command of Major Earl Van Dorn, who afterward became a general in the Confederate Army. These two affairs were the most important events in connection with Indian warfare during the territorial period.

Indian Attack by Charles Marion Russell

Cheyenne Warriors by Edward S. Curtis

The battalion was commanded by Major Horace L. Moore, formerly lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Arkansas Cavalry. It consisted of four companies, numbering 358 officers and enlisted men. It served in western Kansas until November 15th, when it was mustered out. Despite the additional manpower, Cheyenne and Sioux Indians ambushed and killed a 2nd US Cavalry detachment of eleven men and an Indian guide near Beaver Creek in Sherman County, Kansas, known as the Kidder Massacre.

Companies B and C of the Eighteenth Kansas were engaged in a fight with Indians on Prairie Dog Creek on August 21st known as the Battle of Beaver Creek.

The summer of 1868 witnessed considerable activity on the part of hostile Indians. Early in June, the Cheyenne made a raid as far as Council Grove, ostensibly for the purpose of revenging themselves on the Kanza Indians for injuries received from them in the previous fall near Fort Zarah. However, they robbed settlers, killed cattle, and committed other outrages on the whites. On August 4th, some 225 Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux left Pawnee Fork and a few days later were on the Saline River.

They raided the valleys of the Saline and Solomon Rivers, captured wagon trains, killed the escorts and burned the wagons, and carried two women -- Miss White and Mrs. Morgan -- into captivity. They finally extended their field of operations to within 20 miles of Denver, Colorado, their numbers increasing by the addition of other bands until a formidable force was gathered together. The governors of both Kansas and Colorado reported the outrages to the authorities at Washington, urging that something be done with the Indians, and threatening to call out the state troops. The national government tried to induce the savages to return to their reservations, and failing in this, General Philip Sheridan, commanding the Department of the Missouri, was ordered to take the field against the Cheyenne under Roman Nose and Black Kettle. It was in this campaign that Colonel George A. Forsyth's band of scouts, armed with revolvers and repeating rifles, scouted the country about the headwaters of the Solomon River and Fort Wallace, Kansas and in September fought the Battle of Beecher Island.

On October 9, 1868, General Sheridan called upon Governor Samuel Crawford for a regiment of mounted volunteers "to serve for a period of six months, unless sooner discharged, against the hostile Indians on the plains." The regiment consisted of twelve companies of 100 men each. On November 4 Governor Crawford resigned his office to take command of the regiment, which left Topeka the next day for the Indian country, under orders to join General Sheridan's command at Camp Supply in Indian Territory. The march took 24 days, the regiment reaching Camp Supply on the 29th.

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