The Big Head Fight

Hearing gunfire from the vicinity of the village, soldiers of the 3rd Regiment, about two miles west of this location, disobeyed orders and turned their horses toward the bluffs. Somewhere in the prairie west of the village, they encountered a group of warriors including Big Head, followed by George Bent, the son of frontier businessman William Bent and his Cheyenne wife Owl Woman. The soldiers attacked Big Head and his followers, killing most of them. Thwarted by the soldiers' attack on Big Head, George Bent made his way north along the creek, where he witnessed men, women, and children lying thickly scattered on the sand, some dead and others too badly wounded to move. Farther north he reached a sand pit, one of the natural depressions in the creek bed formed by years of flood activity that provided shelter for people fleeing the soldiers, and as he reached its edge he was shot in the hip.

Brandon, Colorado · United States