Turkey Springs

I mentioned in my most recent post that practical knowledge of the locations along the southern portion of the Northern Cheyenne Homecoming Trail is almost nil. People have written plenty about the events that occurred along the trail, but only a few, including John Monnett in Tell Them We Are Going Home and Alan Boye in his book, Holding Stone Hands, have claimed to have actually visited any sites south of Punished Woman’s Fork, near Scott City, KS.

Northern Cheyenne history ties us all to the land. Knowing our history is as critical to our culture as knowing our language. There are nuances to both that resonate within each of us who are born into them. I felt a strong need to find and confirm these places before they become simply names for events that people write about, but no one knows where they happened. That, like a language which no one remembers the words for, is one sign of a dying culture.

Monnett and Boye’s visits to Turkey Springs were to the current developed spring, located on Anderson Creek near Freedom, Oklahoma. This was the same site I visited on my first visit to the area. Neither author verified the location with their research on their visit, and neither did I on my first trip there. What I did do though, was return on subsequent trips to see if the surrounding countryside contained any of the geographic elements mentioned in the various reports and maps produced by those who were there… and it did not. The only feature it possessed that tied it to the battle was its name.

Military reports mention a collective speculation among the officers that they were somewhere in the vicinity of Turkey Springs as it is shown on the 1875 Ruffner map. No effort was made by them to confirm this speculation. It has long since become a common understanding that both the map, and the soldiers, were wrong. This led to a series of return trips for me, and a deeper study of the site, in which I focused on trying to find the ridge, the knoll, the ravine, and anything else that jumped out to say, “This is it – this is the place.” Twelve years later, November 18, 2023, on a lonely, wind-blown point above the canyons of Red Horse Creek, those words were finally uttered.

Before that, on my second trip to the area, I had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Kay Decker of Alva, OK, who had also been looking for the correct location of the Turkey Springs Battlefield for quite some time. We combined our efforts and our research, which led to many, many successive conversations, as well as a lot of map study, cross-country trips and fieldwork. We were joined in the effort by Rebecca Hawkins and her enthusiastic crew from Algonquin Consultants, and, we all then simply went out and found a battlefield that had been lost for one hundred and forty-five years.

We are now in the process of applying for National Historic Site recognition and I will soon be writing a more descriptive paper about our efforts. For now, the picture at the top of this post is of what I call “Rendlebrock’s Knoll.” It also shows the horse ravine described in the various reports and testimonies given about the battle. These, and several other geographic features in the area, match up beautifully with identifying features from maps drawn by battle participants.

In addition, I have posted here a photo of one of the spent 45-70 shell casings found on the knoll by the crew of Algonquin Consultants. This casing has a headstamp with the manufacture date of March 1878, three months prior to the engagement. We know there were no conflicts recorded on this site in the six months between the shell’s date of manufacture and the Battle of Turkey Springs. We also know that this battle was the last armed conflict between the U.S. Military and Native Americans in what is now Oklahoma. Thus, there is no other reason for a shell casing, with that headstamp, to have been in the soil, on that knoll, other than as a result of rifle fire at the Battle of Turkey Springs.

I have been most fortunate to have had the right people join this effort, at just the right time, to help make this discovery. There are many more details and people involved than what I’ve shared here, I will do my best to recognize them in a more formal rendering of this story. Right now, I’m eager to get this post up so I can begin writing about another exciting and emotional discovery a few miles north, in Kansas.