07/08/2024
Edmund Gasseau Choteau Le Guerrier (16 January 1840 – 1 January 1921), of American and Cheyenne parentage, was a survivor of the Sand Creek massacre in 1864. He was an interpreter for the U.S. government during the Indian Wars between the Cheyenne and the United States and later became a successful rancher.
𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞
Guerrier was born January 16, 1840, in a Cheyenne camp on the Smoky Hill River in what is now the state of Kansas. His father William Guerrier, an American of French descent born in 1812 in St. Louis, Missouri, was then employed by the fur trader William Bent of Bent's Fort; his mother was Tah-tah-tois-neh (Walks In Sight), a Cheyenne of Little Rock's Wutapai band. In 1848, his father left William Bent's employ and, in partnership with Seth Edmund Ward, became a licensed trader in the region of the Upper Platte and Arkansas rivers, eventually operating a trading post along the Platte with his partners.
Guerrier's mother and an infant sibling died in an 1849 cholera epidemic. In 1851 Guerrier entered a Catholic mission school near present-day St. Marys, Kansas, and later enrolled in St. Louis University. After his father died in 1857, Guerrier withdrew from the university and eventually returned to live with his mother's people, who knew him as Red Tail Hawk. He narrowly escaped death in the Sand Creek massacre in 1864.
𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐬
Guerrier married George Bent's sister Julia in about 1865. He worked as an interpreter for the Interior Department and was present in that capacity at the negotiations for the Treaty of the Little Arkansas of 1865. After a stint as a trader for licensed arms dealer David A. Butterfield, he was hired as an interpreter by the War Department, assigned to the Seventh U.S. Cavalry and played a crucial role during the spring 1867 Hancock expedition under Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock. In August 1868 he was living with Little Rock's band on Buckner's Fork of the Pawnee River when he learned of the violent raids by a large war party on white settlements along the Saline and Solomon rivers in Kansas; he later gave an affidavit to the U.S. military identifying the men responsible for the raids.
In October 1867 he was an interpreter during negotiations for the Medicine Lodge Treaty. In 1869 he interpreted for the Fifth U.S. Cavalry under Maj. Gen. Eugene A. Carr, and afterwards worked as a trader at Camp Supply for the firm of Lee and Reynolds. He again worked for the Interior Department in 1871 and 1884, interpreting for Cheyenne delegations to Washington, D.C.
𝐆𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐲
Edmund Guerrier died in 1921 at his ranch near the city of Geary, Oklahoma, which was named after him; as Guerrier was difficult for non-French-speakers to pronounce or spell, it became Geary.
𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞: 𝐀 𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐝𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐆𝐮𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫
𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞: 𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 & 𝐊𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲 & 𝐖𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐄𝐲𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐊𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞'𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐞
