Oberlin: The Last Raid

In September of eighteen seventy-eight, a band of Northern Cheyenne led by Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf broke out of a reservation in Indian Territory and headed north toward their homeland in the Black Hills. The United States government had promised they could return if conditions became unbearable, then broke that promise.

As they crossed the Solomon River valley of northwest Kansas, a group of the Cheyenne killed roughly forty-one settlers near Sappa Creek, across what is now Decatur and Rawlins counties, including the Oberlin area. It is remembered as the last Indian raid of consequence in Kansas. Dull Knife's band was captured in October and taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. The breakout ended in massacre there months later. Oberlin erected a historical marker and a monument to the settlers who died, and the town still carries that September morning as a defining part of its story.