Fort Hays: Custer, Buffalo Soldiers, and the Last Stand of the Plains War
Kansas
Fort Hays was established on October eleventh, eighteen sixty-five, to protect military roads, defend construction crews laying the Union Pacific Railroad, and guard the United States mail along the Smoky Hill Trail. The trail cut through the heart of territory claimed by the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, and the fort's presence was a direct assertion of federal intent to push that claim aside.
The post was originally called Fort Fletcher, named for the governor of Missouri. It was renamed Fort Hays in November of eighteen sixty-six, in honor of Union Brigadier General Alexander Hays, who had been killed during the Civil War at the Battle of the Wilderness. A flood in June of eighteen sixty-seven destroyed the original installation, killing nine people, and the fort was relocated about fifteen miles to its current site on Big Creek.
The rebuilt Fort Hays became a significant staging ground for the Indian Wars on the southern Plains. General Philip Sheridan used it as a base of operations. General George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry Regiment were stationed there in eighteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine, during the campaign that culminated in Custer's attack on Black Kettle's Cheyenne village at the Battle of the Washita in November eighteen sixty-eight. William Cody, who had taken the name Buffalo Bill, served as a civilian scout at Fort Hays during this period.
Also stationed at Fort Hays was the Tenth Cavalry Regiment, the Black troopers whom the Cheyenne called Buffalo Soldiers, a name that spread to describe all the Army's Black regiments on the Plains. They served under conditions of military segregation, drew inferior equipment, and received little recognition at the time, but they took part in almost every major campaign on the southern and central Plains.
Fort Hays was abandoned on November eighth, eighteen eighty-nine, after nearly twenty-five years of service. The Indian Wars were over. Four original buildings survive at the Fort Hays State Historic Site: the stone blockhouse, the guardhouse, and two officers' quarters. The site is managed by the Kansas Historical Society.
