THE HERO OF LITTLE COON CREEK

I n a report dated Oct. 1, 1868, Major General Philip Sheridan issued General Field Orders No. 2 to all officers under his command in the military Department of the Missouri. The orders were to be read aloud at every post. In them Sheridan lauded five recent actions between troopers and mostly Southern Cheyenne Indians, including a valiant nine-day defense on the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River that began September 17 and was later celebrated as the Battle of Beecher Island. But it was Sheridan’s mention of a little-known September 2 fight on Little Coon Creek, some 11 miles northeast of Fort Dodge, Kansas, that bears retelling. For it was there 3rd U.S. Infantry Corporal Leander Herron happened on besieged comrades and saved them—an act of bravery for which he received the Medal of Honor. General Sheridan wrote the following about the Battle of Little Coon Creek, a fight seldom mentioned in historical narratives of the Indian wars in Kansas:

The major general commanding calls the attention of the officers and soldiers of his command to the following.…The defense made, after three of their number had been severely wounded, by Corporal James Goodwin, Troop B, 7th Cavalry, [and] Privates John O’Donnell, Company A, Charles Hartman, Company H, and C. Tolan, Company F, 3rd Infantry, against 50 Indians on Little Coon Creek, Kansas, and the voluntary assistance given by Corporals Patrick Boyle, Troop B, 7th Cavalry, and Leander Herron, Company A, 3rd Infantry, mail carriers who happened to be passing.

Kansas was in the midst of another Cheyenne outbreak after yet another failed treaty. “War is surely upon us,” wrote Superintendent of Indian Affairs Colonel Thomas Murphy from his Atchison headquarters on August 22. His dire pronouncement