The Lone Tree Massacre
This Day in Kansas History
In the summer of 1874 western Kansas was a wide-open prairie with very few settled areas. It was during this summer that tensions between Native Americans and White settlers boiled over and attacks on Whites became prevalent from Texas to Montana. The blood shed mainly occurred between Indian war parties who were trying to escape the confines of their reservations and buffalo hunters, freighters, and soldiers. While hunting was suspended for the 1874 season surveying work continued across the Midwest. In Kansas on July 8, 1874, the Surveyor General of Kansas C.W. Babcock of Lawrence awarded two surveying contracts for the Meade County area. One contract No. 381 went to Captain Luther A. Thrasher, Mr. Steel, W.C. Jones, and Harmon Scott for 920 miles of section lines and a commission of $9,117.35. The second contract No. 382 went to Captain Oliver Francis Short and Abram Cutler for 1055 miles of section lines with a commission of $9,677.92. Captain Short was a Civil War veteran and one of the first professional surveyors in the state of Kansas. Though aware of the dangers that the Indians imposed, he told his sister Mary just days before his trip “The Indians are angry and not unjustly so, but I am sure I shall have no trouble with them if I take the surveying contract, for I have worked among them for 18 years and have treated them kindly, they know me as a friend and will not harm me.” Captain Short began his work on August 10, believing what he had told his sister was true and that they would have an escort from the army should anything happen.
Short and Cutler’s crews consisted of Short’s sons Harold, 16 and Truman, 14, James Shaw, 51, his son J. Allen Shaw, 15, J.H. Keuchler, 18, Harry C. Jones, 22, Duncan Fleming, William and Richard Douglas and Frank Blackledge, all of Lawrence, KS. There were also four men assigned to camp duty, a man named Prather, a mulatto man, and 2 that are unknown. They worked in 3 crews, Captain Shorts would leave camp for several days at a time to run the township lines while Captain Thrasher and Captain Cutler’s crews would run section lines and return to camp at night. The main camp that they stayed in while they laid out Township 33, Range 28 was located by a lone cottonwood tree in the northeast quarter of Section 4. Capt. Short began writing a letter to his family on August 16 describing his last few days in Meade County and he continued the letter on Saturday the 22 and Sunday the 23 when it was sent with a hunting party to be mailed at Fort Dodge. That Sunday Capt. Short and his men rested at the main camp, His son Harold would later recall that day saying, “Father, I remember well, took his washing as well as his boys’ clothes down to the creek and gave them a good wash and after dinner, read his Bible and sang a few songs.” There was some discord in the camp that day as some of the boys didn’t get along with the camp cook so Capt. Short agreed to leave Harold behind the next day to work in the camp. This would be the first time that Harold and his brother Truman would be apart since the start of the contract.
The next day was Monday August 24, and the three crews started out early to work that morning. Capt. Shorts crew that day consisted of his son Truman, Mr. Shaw and his son J. Allen, Harry Keuchler, and Harry C. Jones. They left the camp with a horse, a wagon, and two oxen to run township lines for which they were to be gone a week from the camp. The other two crews led by Capt. Thrasher and Capt. Cutler would work on subdividing. The Lone Tree camp would remain where it was until Capt. Short returned. Shorts crew worked their way three miles East and then six miles South before stopping for lunch while Thrashers crew was working two miles East and then six miles South when they, too, stopped for lunch. After lunch the two crews worked West together. When they reached the next section line at around 2pm Thrasher and his crew turned North. Short and his crew continued West and, on the weeks’, worth of good work that they hoped to do only about two hours was completed. History only knows what happened next to Short and his crew through a few field notes and evidence collected by the surveyors who found them two days later. Apparently, Capt. Short and his crew continued reaching the Southwest corner of the township which is where they placed their last stone. This stone was placed at the head of a small stream that would become Shorts Creek. A half mile to the North blood was found along with traces in the ashes of a prairie fire which showed evidence that the Indians had ambushed the surveyors from the ravine and that young Truman was setting flags to the North when he rode back to help his father, but had he ridden instead to the Lone Tree camp he may have lived. The surveyors fought from the cover of the wagon while driving the oxen, loading their guns, and laying their dead and wounded in the back of the wagon. They were headed to the safety of the Lone Tree camp with their comrades going as fast as they could. But as dusk fell on the prairie, the Indians surrounded them. The only footprints found by the wagon belonged to Mr. Shaw, which were recognized by the bits of iron in the heels. It is from this evidence that we know that James Shaw was the last to die.
The other two crews were back in camp, unaware of what was happening to their comrades who lie dead just three miles from the camp. At dusk that day, those in camp saw a wagon to the southwest just over a hill. When it disappeared, they thought nothing of it, believing it to be hunters when, in fact, it was Shorts crew with just one or two men still alive. It was under the cover of night that the Indians removed their dead and left the surveyors lying side by side on the banks of Crooked Creek. Captain Thrasher and his crew would discover the bodies two days later, on Wednesday August 26 as they worked South, setting the Northwest corner stone on Section 20. They found the slain crew with their small dog lying dead next to its master. The oxen were dead, still in their yokes with their hind quarters missing. Capt. Short, his son Truman and Harry Jones had been scalped. The other three men had their heads crushed. Thrasher and his crew loaded the bodies and returned to Lone Tree camp. Harold knew on site of Thrashers crew pulling his father wagon with their cart that his father and brother were dead. They abandoned the survey work after burying the fallen crew just Southeast of the lone cottonwood tree.
The remaining crews returned to Fort Dodge to notify the families. That winter, a group of men, with the help of the Surveyor General and General Pope, the Commandant at Leavenworth went out to retrieve the remains of Short and his crew. Mrs. Short and Mrs. Shaw would eventually be awarded $5,000 from the Government as compensation and Captain Thrasher made a claim for $678 for the surveying equipment stolen by the Indians. Thrasher would finish the survey of both contracts in February of 1875. Harold would return to the lone tree in 1924, his first time back since that fateful summer day in 1874. The bodies of the men were returned to their families with Captain Short and Truman buried at Mount Muncie Cemetery in Leavenworth. James Shaw and his son, J. Allen, were buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence. H. C. Jones who was the nephew of Captain Cutler was buried in Lawrence as well and John Keuchler was sent to his father in Springfield, Illinois.
As for the Indians, we know that they were Cheyenne warriors due to the testimony of two sisters who had been taken captive by them after their parents were killed by these same Indians just a short time before the attack at Lone Tree. The sisters told the army that the Cheyenne returned with a black horse that had belonged to Truman and small brass trinkets that came from surveying equipment. We also know that many of the warriors didn’t come back, meaning that the surveyors didn’t go down with out a fight. We also know that on Thursday, August 27, hunters witnessed a party of 25 Indians leaving camp. When the hunters investigated, they found a compass, parts of a chain, and paper all belonging to Capt. Short. They also found a post card on which an Indian artist had drawn six bodies in different positions with dots, marking the wounds of Shorts crew in a crude fashion. Because of this attack and others, Chief Medicine Water and his wife Mochi who was apart of the band of Cheyenne warriors as well, were arrested and sent with other Indian chiefs to a prison in Florida.
This all took place ten years before the town of Meade was even settled. Though none of the men involved never lived there, they gave their lives for the progress of the county. The lone cottonwood that marked the graves of Short and his men stood as a symbol of the sacrifice of man to tame this land for several decades. It was eventually brought down by a storm in the summer of 1938. However, a piece of it can still be seen at the Meade County Historical Society Museum in Meade, KS. Today, there is a Historical Marker on U.S. 54, at mile post 42.5 on the right-hand side when you are traveling East near Meade. The Lone Tree Massacre was apart of a dark time in Kansas history, a time when a war was raging between a Native people and the White pioneers who were invading their tribal territory from the East. Though not well known, Lone Tree is one of many attacks on Whites by the Native American tribes in the West.
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