Battle of Summit Springs The Battle of Summit Springs , on July 11 , 1869 , was an armed conflict between elements of the United States Army under the command of Colonel Eugene A . Carr and a group of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers led by Tall Bull , who was killed during the engagement . The battle happened near Sterling , Colorado ; the US forces were assigned to retaliate for a series of raids in north - central Kansas by Chief Tall Bull ' s Dog Soldiers band of the Cheyenne . Battle . After Pawnee Scouts under Major Frank North led his command to Tall Bull ' s village , Colonel Carr , a veteran campaigner known as " The Black - Bearded Cossack " , deployed his forces carefully so that they hit the unsuspecting camp from three sides at once . He had 244 men of the 5th United States Regiment of Cavalry and 50 Pawnee Scouts . Captain Luther North of the Pawnee Scout Battalion related this incident in the book " Man of the Plains " : " About a half mile from and off to one side from our line , a Cheyenne boy was herding horses . He was about fifteen years old and we were very close to him before he saw us . He jumped on his horse and gathered up his herd and drove them into the village ahead of our men , who were shooting at him . He was mounted on a very good horse and could easily have gotten away if he had left his herd , but he took them all in ahead of him , then at the edge of the village he turned and joined a band of warriors that were trying to hold us back , while the women and children were getting away , and there he died like a warrior . No braver man ever existed than that 15 year old boy . " Major Frank North saw an Indian rise from cover and take aim at him . He shot and killed the man , who turned out to be Chief Tall Bull . Meanwhile , the Pawnee surrounded 20 Cheyenne warriors who were sheltering in a ravine . Armed only with bows and arrows , the Cheyenne kept their attackers at bay until their arrows ran out , whereupon the Pawnees moved in and killed them all . According to the anthropologist George Bird Grinnell ( who worked with George Bent in the 20th century on these accounts ) , in addition to Tall Bull and the 20 men in the ravine , nine other people were killed by members of the Pawnee Scout Battalion : two warriors ( Lone Bear and Pile of Bones ) ; a very old Suhtai woman on a slow pony ; two Sioux women running on foot ; a Cheyenne woman and two children ( a boy and a girl ) ; and an old Sioux woman whose horse fell and threw her . Grinnell noted only four victims who were not attributed to the Pawnee Scout Battalion : the wife , mother - in - law and two young children of a man named Red Cherries . Grinnell and Donald J . Berthrong identified 23 warriors , one fifteen - year - old boy , five women and two children killed by members of the Pawnee Scout Battalion , and two women and two children whose killers are not specified . This gives a total of 35 people killed . It appears that , although the 5th Cavalrymen had the greater number of forces , the Pawnees were most successful in the killing . One Cheyenne escaped on Tall Bull ' s distinctive white horse . He was shot off it by Scout William Cody ( Buffalo Bill ) in a skirmish the next day , leading Cody to believe that he had killed Tall Bull . In his biography of Luther North , Grinnell footnoted this event , saying : " William Cody later claimed he had killed Tall Bull and Cody ' s protagonists have stated that Luther North ' s account of the shooting was an invention . However , while Frank was a partner with Cody in the cattle business , he related the story of the shooting in detail essentially as Luther recollected it . Carr reported only a single casualty in his command ( a trooper wounded ) and claimed that 52 Indians had been killed . Seventeen women and children were captured , along with more than 300 horses and mules . One white woman captive , Susanna Alderdice , was killed and another , Maria Weichell , was wounded .