Battle of Beecher Island was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Colorado, 1868.
Sometimes called the Battle of Arikaree Fork, this clash pitted a coalition of Plains Native American tribes against Forsyth's Scouts, a hand-picked unit of frontier civilians assembled and led by Brevet-Colonel George Alexander Forsyth. The fighting took place in the final days of September 1868, when Forsyth and his men dug in on a small island in the Arikaree River, a waterway then regarded as a branch of the North Fork of the Republican River, close to what is now Wray, Colorado. That spot would later take its name, Beecher Island, from Lieutenant Fredrick H. Beecher, Forsyth's second in command, who lost his life in the engagement.
Sometimes called the Battle of Arikaree Fork, this clash pitted a coalition of Plains Native American tribes against Forsyth's Scouts, a hand-picked unit of frontier civilians assembled and led by Brevet-Colonel George Alexander Forsyth. The fighting took place in the final days of September 1868, when Forsyth and his men dug in on a small island in the Arikaree River, a waterway then regarded as a branch of the North Fork of the Republican River, close to what is now Wray, Colorado. That spot would later take its name, Beecher Island, from Lieutenant Fredrick H. Beecher, Forsyth's second in command, who lost his life in the engagement.
The site known as the Beecher Island Battleground Memorial holds a place on the National Register of Historic Places, listed under number NPS-76000569. It also carries recognition as a property on the Colorado State Register.
On September 30, the men known as Forsyth's Scouts made their way back into Fort Wallace. Custer would later declare the clash at Arickaree "the greatest battle on the plains," while among the Cheyenne it survived in memory simply as the day Roman Nose fell. Official counts placed Indian losses at only nine confirmed dead, though the soldiers involved insisted they had killed far more, by their own reckoning hundreds. Some years afterward, Forsyth happened upon a Brule Lakota man who had fought in the engagement, and speaking through an interpreter, this warrior told him that seventy-five of his people had died there, with many others wounded. Despite what it might have taught the army about fighting Indians, the battle's tactical lessons went largely unheeded. In 1976 the site itself earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
When spring came the following year, Captain Brown went back to recover the fallen. He located the remains of Culver and Farley, but the graves holding Beecher, Wilson, and Doctor Mooers stood empty, their bodies seemingly taken by Indians. Culver and Farley were laid to rest again at Fort Wallace.
At the battlefield itself, Colorado and Kansas together raised a monument to mark what had happened there.
This page covers Battle of Beecher Island. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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