Clara Blinn

Who was Clara Blinn?

Clara Blinn was a white settler who, with her two-year-old son Willie, was captured by Indians in October 1868 in Colorado Territory during an attack on the wagon train in which she and her family were traveling. She and her little boy were killed on or about November 27, 1868 during or in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Washita River, in which the camp of the Cheyenne chief Black Kettle was attacked and destroyed by troops of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. Clara and Willie Blinn's bodies were found some two weeks after the fight in one of several abandoned Indian camps along the Washita River near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma.

Clara and Willie Blinn remain at the center of a historical controversy over the exact circumstances of their death, the identity of their captors, and the location of their bodies when they were found. Contemporary sources disagree over whether the Blinns were held captive by Kiowas, Cheyennes, or Arapahos and, if by Cheyennes, whether they were held in Black Kettle's camp or in one of the other Cheyenne villages encamped along the Washita River at the time of the attack. Present-day authorities on the Battle of the Washita continue to reflect differing opinions on these questions.