The Battle of Turkey Springs (13–14 September 1878) was the last battle between Native Americans (Indians) and the United States Army in the state of Oklahoma. In the Northern Cheyenne Exodus, 353 Cheyenne Indians, fleeing their reservation in Oklahoma in an attempt to return to their homeland in the northern Great Plains, fought a unit of the United States Army, killing three soldiers. After the battle the Cheyenne continued northward skirmishing with the army along the way. Some were successful in reaching their relatives in Montana. Others were captured or killed near Camp Robinson, Nebraska.
In the 1830s the Cheyenne tribe split into two groups: the Northern Cheyenne and the Southern Cheyenne. The Dull Knife and Little Wolf bands of the Northern Cheyenne were defeated by the U.S. Cavalry in the Dull Knife Fight in November 1876. Chiefs Dull Knife (also known as Morning Star) and Little Wolf and their followers subsequently surrendered to the U.S. at Camp Robinson, Nebraska. From May to August 1877, the Northern Cheyenne were escorted by soldiers 1,300 km (810 miles) south to the Southern Cheyenne reservation in Oklahoma. Nine-hundred and thirty seven Cheyenne arrived at the reservation, headquartered about 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of present-day Oklahoma City near Fort Reno. Conditions were difficult with shortages of food and outbreaks of measles and malaria. Dull Knife and Little Wolf pleaded to be allowed to return to the northern plains but were turned down. In September 1878, the two leaders and 350 of their followers fled the reservation with the intent of journeying to rejoin other groups of Northern Cheyenne who resided mostly in Montana. Ninety-two of those fleeing the reservation were warriors; the remainder were women, children, and elderly.
On 10 September, a veteran soldier, Captain Joseph Rendlebrock, with 85 officers and men and two Arapaho scouts departed Fort Reno with the objective of catching and capturing the fleeing Cheyenne. Rendlebrock reported that he was on the trail of the Cheyenne, but that they were well-mounted and that he hoped to catch them near the Arkansas River in Kansas near Dodge City. Instead, he found the Cheyenne waiting for him at a waterhole called Turkey Springs in hilly country near the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. The Cheyenne had killed two cowboys nearby.
On September 13, following the trail of the Cheyenne, Captain Rendlebrock saw Cheyenne warriors on a hilltop. He formed a skirmish line with his soldiers and sent an Arapaho scout named "Chalk" or "Ghost Man" to talk to Dull Knife and Little Wolf. Chalk conveyed the message that the Cheyenne must return to the reservation. The Cheyenne leaders declined to return and warriors began moving around the flanks of the soldiers. The soldiers opened fire and the Cheyenne responded in kind, although the firing was sparse as the Cheyenne preserved their limited ammunition. Desultory fighting continued all day with two soldiers killed and three wounded. After dark, desperate for water, seven soldiers attempted and failed to gain access to the water in the springs.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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