August 24, 1874
On this day, the Lone Tree Incident occurred in Meade County, Kansas. The killing of four government surveyors is remembered as one of the most tragic events in the state’s early history.
The U. S. survey team, attacked by Cheyenne Indians, had been contracted to map nearly two thousand miles of section lines in southern Kansas was .
Surveyors, Captain Oliver Short and Captain Luther Thrasher were awarded the contract even though tensions between the government and Native Americans had increased during the summer over issues of white incursion and decimation of the buffalo herds. Washington, in a counter productive move, declared a moratorium on buffalo hunting. Surveying, however, continued unabated across the prairie.
Short’s surveyors included his two teenage sons, Harold and Truman, James Shaw and his son, Allan, several students from the University of Kansas and a number of unnamed souls assigned to camp duties. Short, saying he had always enjoyed a good relationship with the native people, felt confident they posed no threat to them. His party rested on Sunday and, according to a letter written to his wife that day, they observed the Sabbath by singing a hymn and reading the Bible.
The Short campsite in a turn-of-the-century photograph
He described their camp in the letter as pleasant, with a single cottonwood tree and good water. Reporting that while he had not seen any hunters, he said he believed they were nearby, having heard their rifle fire. He also wrote that the cook and several members of his crew had spent part of the previous day fighting a prairie fire.
Monday morning Short headed out, leaving his oldest son, Harold, in camp to help the cook who had squabbled with other members of the party. Sometime that afternoon, three miles south and east, Short and his team were attacked and killed by a party of Cheyenne.
Thrasher and his crew were working along parallel lines. They passed nearby the site of the murders that day, but the victims were hidden from view by 
the rolling terrain. On Wednesday, however, the Thrasher team came upon the scene of the killings. All four surveyors were dead, their bodies laid out next to their wagon. Two had been scalped, the oxen had been butchered and Captain Short’s dog shot.
Captain Thrasher (right) had the sad duty of returning the bodies to camp and informing young Harold that both his father and brother were dead.
It had been agreed beforehand that if the work crews were attacked, they would signal for help by setting the dry grass aflame. But the previous fire had burned off the prairie, leaving the Short party to fend for themselves.
A Kansas farmer named Germaine had also been attacked by about 25 Cheyenne just prior to the assault on the surveyors. Germaine and his wife were killed and the couple’s two daughters taken captive.
The girls were later rescued, reporting their captors had returned to camp with a shod horse belonging to Truman Short along with Oliver’s survey implements. Examination of the abandoned Cheyenne camp also revealed a number of survey documents, as well.
The tired-looking Cottonwood in the 1920s
Later, Meade County residents placed a marker near the lone cottonwood tree at the Short camp. When the tree blew over in a storm in 1938 the marker and a portion of the tree were moved to the Meade County Courthouse. In 1942 the Kansas Historical Society erected a permanent monument along Highway 54 and 160 at the location. *See “Venture West” footnote.
Leader of the Meade County attacks was Medicine Water, the powerful chief of the Bowstring Warrior Society. Born in the Yellowstone region in 1837 and confined to an Oklahoma reservation, he had become militant, not unduly so, over the loss of the buffalo. The U.S. Government had encouraged the mass slaughter of buffalo during the period and forbidden the Cheyenne to leave the reservation to hunt. Officials were convinced that eradicating the native peoples’ main source of food and shelter would persuade them to accept confinement to reservations.
Mochi and presumed to be Medicine Water
In just one of the many eye-for-an-eye ironies of the Old West, Medicine Water’s wife, Mochi (Buffalo Calf) had been present at the Sand Creek Massacre ten years earlier. An estimated 700 members of the Colorado Territory militia massacred more than 160 mostly women and children of the Cheyenne Black Kettle band.
Having escaped the slaughter at Sand Creek, Mochi took up arms with her husband. She was eventually captured and incarcerated by the U.S. Army, the only Native American woman to be held as a prisoner of war.
The Meade County Historical Museum, 200 East Carthage, Meade, Kansas includes an exhibit on the Lone Tree Incident along with depictions of frontier life. A one-room schoolhouse, windmill and early farm implements are located in an outdoor exhibit.
Admission is free. Open year-round Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 5 and Sunday, 1 to 5. Closed Monday and holidays. For more information go to oldmeadecounty.com/museum, call (620) 873-2359, e-mail meademusuem@yahoo.com or write the museum at P.O. Box 893, Meade, Kansas 67864-0893.
*Kansas State Historical Society and Department of Transportation Marker 78 is located at the Lone Tree Incident site on U.S. 54, Milepost 42.5 on the right side of the highway when traveling east.
© Text Only – 2018 – Headin’ West LLC – All photos – public domain or fair use.