This ruggedly beautiful canyon and hidden, underground grotto was the site in 1878 of the last 'Indian battle' in Kansas between a group of Northern Cheyenne led by chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife and US troops out of Fort Dodge led by
Lt. Colonel William H. Lewis who was mortally wounded in the skirmish. The incident, which had been well-planned as an ambush by the Cheyenne, occurred during their ultimately failed attempt to escape the hellish conditions on the reservation in Oklahoma and return to their traditional hunting grounds in Montana, the same trek portrayed by John Ford's groundbreaking 1964 movie 'Cheyenne Autumn', which starred Richard Widmark, Sal Mineo, Karl Malden, Caroll Baker, Delores del Rio, Ricardo Montalban, John Carradine, and Jimmy Stewart. After Lewis fell, the soldiers withdrew and the Cheyenne were able to continue north, but starving and without most of their ponies, which the soldiers had slaughtered during the battle, they were ultimately captured and returned to the reservation. The battle was re-enacted several times in the 1950's by the local community, with the last one being performed in 1961, the Kansas centennial year, which I still remember though I was only two. There are hopes of reviving this tradition.
A special thanks to my friend Dan P.