In June 1867 Kidder and his men were ordered to take dispatches from General William T. Sherman to Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, camped on the Republican River in Nebraska.

En route to Fort Wallace, Kidder and his troops were spotted by Oglala Lakota buffalo hunters who alerted the inhabitants of two small camps on nearby Little Beaver Creek in Colorado, that soldiers with pack mules were headed their way and would arrive in a short time.

When Kidder's men spotted the twelve approaching Dog Soldiers, they raced off at a gallop in search of a defensible position and soon dismounted and sought shelter in a depression.

According to Cheyenne accounts, the Lakota scout Red Bead, who was with the soldiers, called out to his fellow tribesmen to be spared, but his pleas went unheeded by the enraged warriors who considered him a traitor.

[1] All members of the Kidder party were killed, and the Lakotas scalped and ritually mutilated them to render them unable to fight in the afterworld by smashing in their skulls, slashing the sinews of their arms and legs, cutting off their noses as well and then filling every dead body with arrows.

[4] When Custer sent troopers to search for Lt. Kidder's party, they found a dead army horse on the trail, then signs of a running battle for a few miles along Beaver Creek.

On 12 July, Custer's scout Will Comstock found the mutilated bodies of the Kidder party north of Beaver Creek in northern Sherman County, Kansas.