When the HOP Ranch was founded in 1871, living on the Colorado prairie was a dangerous prospect. Relations between settlers and Native-Americans were tense and there was an undercurrent of deep mistrust over land ownership. Unscrupulous persons went to the American Old West to avoid the law, and others that took advantage of a perceived lack of law. Even the natural elements presented hazards. In November 1864, 100 miles due east of the Chico Basin, Colonel John Chivington led roughly 675 US volunteer soldiers in an attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village of about 700 people. In the end, approximately 200 Native-Americans were killed, most of them noncombatant women, children, and elderly. Then a few years later, in September 1868, members of the US Army and of several tribes of Plains Indians became involved in the Battle of Beecher Island near Wray, Colorado, about 200 miles northeast of the Chico Basin. The battle turned into a nine-day siege and by its end, a few dozen Army soldiers and Plains Indian warriors were killed and many others wounded. Both of these events were important incidents, among others, that preceded Custer's Last Stand in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana in June 1876.