On November 27, 1868, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led a dawn assault on the Southern Cheyenne village of Peace Chief Black Kettle on the banks of the Washita River in what is now Roger Mills County. The attack came in the middle of winter, with the temperature well below freezing, and the village's occupants were asleep when the cavalry charged from four directions simultaneously at first light. Custer reported killing 103 warriors; later estimates put the figure much lower, with many of the dead being women, children, and elderly. Around fifty-three women and children were taken prisoner. Black Kettle, who had survived the Sand Creek Massacre four years earlier and had spent the intervening years trying to maintain peaceful relations with the U.S. government, was killed along with his wife as they attempted to cross the river on horseback.
The site sits at the center of one of the most contested narratives in American military history. The U.S. Army called it a decisive victory in the Indian Wars; many historians and Native Americans call it a massacre. Black Kettle's legacy complicates any simple reading: he was a consistent voice for peace in a period when peace was extraordinarily difficult to sustain, and his village had been camped in an area designated as safe by the military. The Southern Cheyenne and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma maintain a deep connection to this place, and their perspective is central to how the site is now interpreted. The National Park Service designated it a National Historic Site in 1996.
The visitor center, on the western edge of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, has exhibits on both the Cheyenne way of life and the events of that morning. From there you can walk an interpretive trail that runs along the Washita River to the approximate site of Black Kettle's village. The landscape is open shortgrass prairie, the river lined with cottonwoods, and on a cold November morning it is not difficult to imagine the scene. Allow a couple of hours. The site is about 50 miles west of Cordell via US-183.