A punitive expedition led by Colonel Edwin "Bull" Sumner had been pursuing the Cheyenne since May in retaliation for attacks on emigrant wagon trains.

A portion of Sumner's forces finally discovered a large Cheyenne war party waiting for them on the river's north bank.

[1] In the years preceding the Battle of Solomon’s Fork, the Cheyenne people had maintained relative peace with the white settlers, who had not yet started to encroach on their territory.

[3] Trouble began when the Sioux people, traditional allies of the Cheyenne, killed 31 United States Army soldiers at the Grattan Massacre in 1854.

In March of 1856, Colonel William Selby Harney joined Sioux leaders at a peace meeting at Fort Pierre.

This meeting included Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples as well, and Harney demanded that they all make peace with each other and withdraw from the Platte River territory.

General Persifor Frazer Smith, commander of the Department of the West, demanded severe punishment for the Cheyenne attacks.

At the time, the U.S. Army was busy trying to keep the peace between pro-slavery groups and Free-Staters during the Bleeding Kansas conflict, so Smith suggested a delayed operation against the Cheyenne for later the following year.

[2] In May 1857, Colonel Edwin "Bull" Sumner led his cavalry of 300 soldiers and Pawnee scouts west from Fort Leavenworth in a punitive expedition against the Cheyenne.

The troops and Cheyenne broke off into more minor skirmishes over a five-mile radius, most notably with Lieutenant James E. B. Stuart.

The battle lasted only one day, as Sumner soon received orders to send most of his cavalry to protect a Mormon expedition in Salt Lake City.

Up to this point, the Cheyenne had deliberately avoided conflict with the U.S. government, and hostilities with white settlers had been fleeting, local, and incidental.