Beecher Island & 7th Cavalry Artifacts

According to one account, the older gentleman left quite an impression on his grandson through stories about Civil War incidents and Indian fights, pioneer hardships, the Battle of Beecher Island and Colonel Forsyth's Scouts--many of whom the grandfather knew personally.

It is perhaps no surprise that the grandson took a life-long interest in these matters, and assembled a collection of artifacts from locations in western Kansas that he heard so much about in his formative years. Sparks made trips to the sites of these stories, recovering and locating objects relating to the men who were there.

Many of these items are now in the collections of the Kansas Historical Society. They speak to the history of the west and events that were quite real, not the stuff of Hollywood.

Battle of Beecher Island

In the summer of 1868 Colonel George A. Forsyth recruited frontiersmen to be scouts. With these men he engaged a band of Cheyenne who had raided a wagon train near Fort Wallace, meeting them in battle on a sandy island in the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River, just inside the Colorado border. Forsyth's men dug in on the island and were besieged from September 17th to the 25th until a rescue force from Fort Wallace arrived. Forsyth lost five men and another sixteen were wounded. It is not known how many Cheyenne were lost, but the warrior Roman Nose was killed.

On one of his examinations of the site many years later, Sparks found the remains of two Colt Model 1860 Army revolvers (pictured top, right), rusted and with the grips rotted away, assumed to be used by the Forsyth Scouts. On one firearm the initials "T.H." are stamped on the frame, but this only raises another question-who is "T.H.?" No one with those initials appears on the list of the Scouts.

7th Cavalry

One legendary army unit of the west was the Seventh United States Cavalry, known for its Lieutenant Colonel, George Armstrong Custer, and the battle at the Little Big Horn. But well before that fateful battle, the Seventh resided in Kansas. It was organized in 1866 at Fort Riley and served in the state until 1871.

Among the items Col. Sparks recovered with a connection to the Seventh Cavalry are a forage cap and a mug. The white ceramic mug (pictured top, left) has no makers' marks, but its sides do offer a faded image of crossed swords, the number 7, and the letter B (indicating the company).

The cap (pictured bottom, right) still has much of the makers label, indicating that it was made by "Bent & Bush, Manufacturers and Dealers in Military, Navy Goods, 387 Washington Street, Boston." It also has in ink the name "Farnsworth," presumably the soldier it belonged to, and the insignia of Company F of the Seventh. But, as of yet, we cannot identify Mr. Farnsworth. Here's a side view of the cap.

These are just four of 73 valuable historical objects now in the collections of the Kansas Museum of History, donated in 2003 by Col. Sparks' stepson, Thomas Ferguson.

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