Wild West Podcast

The Forgotten Heroes of the Santa Fe Trail: Valor at Little Coon Creek

Michael King/Brad Smalley

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Gunfire echoes across the Kansas plains, where desperate men take cover behind a hasty barricade of battered wagons and lifeless horses. With their ammunition dangerously low and hope dwindling, the situation looks grim—until one valiant soldier boldly steps forward, ready to embark on what appears to be a suicide mission.

Welcome to the gripping tale of the Battle of Little Coon Creek, set in September 1868. This extraordinary tale chronicles how Corporal Patrick "Patty" Boyle’s unrivaled bravery turned the tides in what seemed like a certain death sentence for his comrades. Historian Jeff Broome unveils how a typical dispatch run between frontier forts transformed into a desperate struggle when Boyle and Corporal Leander Herron stumbled upon their fellow soldiers under fierce attack by warriors along the Santa Fe Trail.

As the drama unfolds, we see Boyle make a heart-wrenching choice—handing over his weapons with the unforgettable words, "Here, boys, you want them more than I do." He then charges headfirst into enemy lines, determined to seek reinforcements. Meanwhile, the defenders are locked in a harrowing battle that stretches through the night, their ammunition dwindling to a mere twelve rounds by dawn. Just when hope is all but lost, an unexpected sight emerges on the horizon: cavalry soldiers, gallantly charging to the rescue, clad only in their white underwear, appearing like ghostly apparitions on the battlefield.

What’s even more captivating is what happened after the battle. Decades later, while Corporal Leander Herron was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor, the memory of Boyle—who had tragically passed away before he could receive recognition—remains unadorned despite his incredible heroism. In his extensive research, Broome unearthed a rare gem: a 1930 radio interview featuring the then 85-year-old Leander Herron sharing his vivid memories of that fateful night, connecting us to this often-overlooked chapter of frontier history.

This tale is more than just a recounting of a military skirmish; it delves into the profound themes of sacrifice, duty, and the complex nature of heroism through the ages. For enthusiasts of the American frontier, military history, or tales of remarkable courage, Patty Boyle’s midnight ride is a powerful testament to the extraordinary individuals whose stories have shaped the West.
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Brad Smalley:

In early September of 1868, a few days before Sully was ordered from Fort Dodge to find those hostiles responsible for the Kansas raids. During this time, a wagon guard from Fort Dodge, sent to Fort Larned to secure the post mail, was struck by a large war party near Little Coon Creek. The men hastily threw up a barricade using the wagon and several dead horses. As the battle continued, three of the men were seriously wounded. The attackers repeatedly sent waves of horsemen against the stronghold, but the little group continued to hold out until nightfall. As darkness set in. The only man not wounded, corporal Patrick O'Boyle.

Brad Smalley:

The 7th Cavalry, volunteered to take the remaining horse and ride to Fort Dodge for help. On his departure he threw his weapons to his fellow troopers with the advice here, boys, you want them more than I do. After a hard ride during which four braves pursued the corporal within a mile of the post, help was quickly gathered and the wounded men were relieved from attack. Private James Goodwin had received a gunshot wound in the shoulder, private John O'Donnell had suffered bullet wounds in the thigh, neck and face, and Private Charles Fatten had wounds in one arm and his buttocks. Can you tell us the circumstances behind the Battle of Little Coon Creek and how one man earned the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

This is a very interesting story that I uncovered in my research and I added in my book Cheyenne War. And then you know, after a book comes out you do further research and I found descendants, leander Heron, and got further information. And this is just a fascinating story. It's September 2nd and actually Peter Patrick O'Boyle Patty O'Boyle was a friend of his in Company B of the 7th Cavalry and was stationed at Fort Dodd and Leander Heron was a corporal of the 3rd Infantry stationed at Fort Larned. Now, while this outbreak's going on all this stuff in August this is less than a month later it's still going on. War is all over the place. Twenty-one people have reported killed in late August in Colorado by the Colorado governor at that time and I know the stories of many of them.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

So there was no telegraph between Fort Larned and Fort Dodge. They were about 60, 65 miles apart. The water source that connected the two posts was the Coon Creek, about halfway between them. Little Coon Creek goes into Coon Creek About halfway between them. Little Coon Creek goes into Coon Creek and there was a kind of a post, an outpost for protection and stuff. It had a sergeant and 10 men and they had. There were no trees there was only buffalo chips for wood. So wagon details would occasionally when they could bring on a wagon load of wood that they could burn on their camp stove for cooking, and that's what the wood detail was bringing up from Fort Dodge.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

When Corporal Heron was sent with dispatches down to Fort Dodge you always went at night. You waited till it was right at dusk. You could take off then. But you right, but the next day, the day of the fight, it's a full moon. So you know it's an easy night to see somebody on the night before September 1st. But anyway, halfway up right at about Little Coon Creek, he runs into that detail bringing the wood up Because they've left it dark from Fort Dodge and, like I say, it's about the halfway point. So the two met just before they got there and they were all private, and so Corporal Heron talked to them for a little bit and they said they were delivering the wood and then they were going to go back and he told them to either stay for a detail, because this is dangerous here, or wait for night. And so they did wait for night. They took off at about dusk to go back to Fort Dodge.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

Well, general Sully is now commanding at Fort Dodge and he's got either a reply to the dispatch that Leander brought down or something new and he wanted that sent up to Fort Larned. He slept in the day and then at night he was allowed to pick a companion. You know for his danger. So he picked his friend, patty Boyle, who had the fastest horse in Company B. So they're coming up and there are two routes that you can take. They're called the wet route and the dry route. The wet route follows the creek. It's shorter but you can get mired in mud and that sort of thing, and the dry route is up on the ground and it's about 10 miles longer. Well, that's where they're going at night. That's where the wagon train's going the wood and all that. They're going at night. That's where the wagon train's going, they're doing the wood and all that, and Patty and Leander Heron are riding their horses this is a full moon and they hear gunfire down on the wet route and they're, you know, probably about a half a mile away from that, and so they check their weapons and they load it and all that and make sure they're ready. And they get a little closer and they observe Indians circling around a wagon and they decide to come from the back of the Indians thinking that they could get through them and get to the rescue. And they did. And they got to the wagon and they'd been fighting for just a little bit, not too long.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

But Leander Heron, being the corporal in charge, recognized this is a dangerous situation and Patty Boyle volunteered to try to break through the Indians and get back down and help from Fort Dodge. Now they give his weapons. He didn't need it. But he also gave something else. Both men had filled their canteens with alcohol. Leander Heron said that that was in case of snakebite, which was a common treatment. But anyway, they had whiskey In addition to his weapon that he gave to his fellow troopers. Patty took a swig of the whiskey and says I won't be needing this, boys, you take it. And they actually used that whiskey for good use after they got wounded because there had been no wounds to this time.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

And so off he goes and the men hear all this firing and yelling and then silence and they figured that Patty was dead and then the attacks come, incessant all night long, circling. And they'd already the wagon was already had countless arrows in it and stuff when Patty and Leander got there. So it goes on, and on, and on, and as the night goes on and it gets up, probably at 3, 4 in the morning, and each time that they attack them they circle and they're circling closer. This is standard Indian warfare, because you're really wanting the men to use up their ammunition. And what they would do, as Leander told us the story is they would circle, they would get on the backside of the horse and fire underneath the horse. So the only thing you could hit is a hand holding the horse and maybe a leg on one side, or shoot the horse and they'd shoot from underneath. But they're trying to get them to use up the ammunition. And sure enough, shortly before dawn. And now all these wounded men are there and all that. In fact Leander Heron, one of those men, gunshot in his hand. He couldn't load his pistol but he would continue firing because Leander would load his pistol when he needed it loaded, but he'd fire with his left hand. So it's looking bad and they're down to 12 rounds of ammunition and they know that the Indians are going to torture them if they run out of ammunition. So they're going to shoot themselves in the last attack and they expect it.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

It's right at dawn and all of a sudden the Indians run away and then coming behind them is a group of men that they could see in the dawn light, appearing all in white, and they thought it was a ruse by the dog soldier Indians to get them to give up or something and get them. The Indians didn't know that they only had 12 rounds of ammunition left, but they knew they were getting lower and lower with each charge. That was, patty Boyle brought his company. He woke them up probably I'm guessing about three in the morning and said hey, boys, we got a big fight up here at Little Coon, come on. Well, they didn't get dressed. They were in their underclothes, they were wearing their white long you know long johns and white shirts and they look like ghosts riding in to the rescue.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

So here's how the Medal of Honor happens and why Patty doesn't get it. And after all these incidents, sheridan issues an order commending six different acts of terrorism or something. One of them is the Battle of Beecher Island and this one's noted so about, I don't know, maybe 1917 or something, when he had to refile to continue a pension claim. Leander Heron read that people with a Medal of Honor get $10 more a month. And he remembered that before he got out of the service it had been recommended and it had been lost and he contacted the War Department about that. And sure enough, they found the records and gave him the Medal of Honor.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

Well, patty Boyle was dead by then, so they couldn't give him one. Well, they could today, and he was to be recommended too and should have had one, but he was dead, and back then in 1917, they generally did not give Medals of Honor to dead people, just that George Armstrong Custer, who died. Anyway, he died on June 25th 1876, and he never got a medal of honor. General Carr got a medal of honor in the 1898 or something like that for his action at Pea Ridge, and that pales to Custer's actions. So Custer would have probably got two, maybe three medals of honor had he lived, but he didn't and Patty Boyle didn't and Patti Boyle didn't.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

And there you know a little bit of the rest of the story. I find it a fascinating story. There's one other thing that I can tell people about that I found descendants of Lee Heron and learned that one lady had inherited a recording of a 1930 broadcast on the Eddie Rickenbacker Chevrolet Presents radio show. Rickenbacker was a hero, medal of Honor winner as a fighter pilot in World War I. So the two are on this radio broadcast that the family had never listened to, had never been played once.

Dr. Jeff Broome:

That old 78 record that's how they made tapes back then and they sent it to me. They and they sent it to me. They trusted me and sent it to me and I had it converted to CD and gave it to the family members so they could listen to it. I kept a copy. I still listen to it every now and then. It's just fun to hear his voice. And I worked to get a copy to Fort Larned. You can access it there but it's not the complete story. It's an eight-minute story and they only have about five minutes there. The Wild West magazine. You can access it through them called historynet and find it there.

Captain Rickenbacker:

But it's a fascinating story. A Medal of Honor, the The exploits of American scouts and soldiers on the plains have an endless for to every American, young and old. Tonight I have the very Nebraska, a ing man of the old Indian Wars nd the Civil War as well o special honor Corporal Leander Heron, retired Company A, 3rd US Infantry, now living at St Paul, N nebraska. Corporal Heron now in his 85th year, is one of the few defend still alive who of the old Santa Fe Trail. He fought worked, worked and played with Wild Bill Hickok and Edward Dick, and is the only man in the state of Nebraska who holds the Congressional Medal of Honor. And so it gives me great pleasure to introduce Corporal Harrod, who will tell you about that bit of Indian history which won him his coveted decoration.

Leander Herron:

Harrod. Thank you, captain Rickenbacker. Back in the 60s, fort Dodge, kansas, was a distributing point for supplies along the Santa Fe Trail. We were fighting with the Indians all the time and my hardest scrap for them took place near Fort Dodge in September 1868. That was 62 years ago but I remember as clearly as if it had happened. But yesterday, one evening, the commanding officer at Fort Dodd ordered me to choose a comrade and carry dispatches to Fort Larned, 75 miles away. I was a young fellow then and I felt honored by the assignment Because such well-known scouts as Wild Bill, hickok, california Joe and Apache Bill were at the fort and might have been chosen. We could see the Indians signaling with smoke and fire on the hilltops in all directions and that meant trouble. So I picked Patty Boyle, a tribe and true friend and a brave man, to come along with me. That sounds like a tough assignment, corporal. It was Captain, it was Captain.

Leander Herron:

But that night we managed to sneak out of the fort and were well on our way when, up near Little Coon Creek, we heard rifle fires and the blood-curdling yells of the Indians. We swung away from the trail and there, hurled into the ravine, were four men and a dual team. The crack and flash of rifles around the edge of the ravine showed that the Indians had been in a pocket. We were on an important mission. Our orders were to proceed to Fort La Fort Liners with all possible speed, but I just couldn't see those white men massacred. So we spurred our horses and cut through the circle of Indians and joined the little group in the ravine. I sent Boyle, who had the best horse. I sent Boyle, who had the best horse, back to the fort for help. The brave fellow plunged down the ravine which opened out on the plains and although it was night, the Indians somehow saw him and went creeping after him. We assumed he had been killed and we decided to sell our lives at the highest possible cost.

Leander Herron:

The Indians kept rushing us on their horses, hanging on the far side of the mount, so that we had only a leg and an arm to shoot. At Soon they began to suffer casualties. One of our men was Tomahawk. In a hand-to-hand combat with a husky blade, bullets and arrows disabled the others, so that two of us had to bear the brunt of the defense. Then our ammunition began to run low. The Indians were making smaller and smaller circles around us and it looked like the end had arrived. Then, just as they seemed to be preparing for the final rush, a body of horsemen in white appeared. At first we thought they were Indians in disguise, but they called out in English, and when the leader galloped up, it was Boyle at the head of his squadron from the 7th United States Cavalry. Why?

Captain Rickenbacker:

the white uniforms Corporal Herring.

Leander Herron:

It wasn't uniforms, captain. The garrison of the fort had been asleep when Boyle arrived and they jumped from their boats and rushed to our rescue in their night shirts and underwear. Strange to say, I came through without a scratch. I didn't count the number of times the wagon was struck, but those who did told me that it was hit 500 times with bullets and arrows, and those arrows were sticking out like quills on a porcupine.

Captain Rickenbacker:

A truly wonderful story, Corporal Harrow, and certainly one that fulfills the Medal of Honor provision as being above and beyond the call of duty.

Brad Smalley:

Those early 20th century recordings like that, rare as they are. When you come across them, they're just fascinating, even getting an insight to people who lived before our modern technology. Yes, talking about that, it's a fascinating record. Thank you very much, jeff. That is a fantastic review. That's it for now. If you'd like to purchase any of Jeff's books, you can check out the links on the description page of this podcast. Remember to check out our Wild West podcast shows on iTunes or wildwestpodcastbuzzsproutcom. You can also catch us on Facebook at facebookcom slash wildwestpodcast or on our YouTube channel at Wild West Podcast, mike King YouTube. So make sure you subscribe to our shows listed at the end of the description text of this podcast to receive notification on all new episodes. Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you have any comments or want to add to our series, please write us at wildwestpodcast at gmailcom. We will share your thoughts as they apply to future episodes. Thank, you.

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