THE LAST BATTLE OF THE PAWNEE WITH

THE SIOUX

BY WILLIAM Z. TAYLOR

During the heavy snow storm of April, 1873, I came to Lincoln from Burlington, Iowa, my former home, and as soon as the road was open we boarded the first train for Lowell, the end of the Burlington & Missouri railroad at that time. The next day we went by stagecoach to Orleans, in the Republican valley. A few days later we organized a party to explore the upper Republican country and to hunt buffaloes. On the 25th of April we went into camp at the mouth of the Frenchman river, in Hitchcock county. My health was poor, but stimulated by the invigorating air and the sight of the thousands of buffaloes scattered over the most beautiful part of Nebraska I had seen, I decided to take my homestead right there; and I incidentally laid the foundation for the future town of Culbertson.

On the 4th of August, 1873, while we were building the first store in the new town of Culbertson, we learned that a band of about four hundred Pawnee, who had come from their reservation to hunt buffaloes, were in camp ten miles south on Driftwood creek. We drove to the camp and, finding that the Indians had gone northwest toward the Republican river, overtook and followed them until we came to the river where we left them. They crossed the river, went up what is now known as Massacre cañon about three miles, and camped at a point between the Republican and Frenchman rivers, about ten miles west of Culbertson. Notwithstanding that the Indians were well loaded with the dried meat and hides from about three

hundred buffaloes, the sight of a herd the next morning in the northeast, toward the Frenchman, tempted their hunters, and many of them went in pursuit, leaving the old men, squaws and children to pack the ponies and follow. No sooner were the hunters out of sight than a band of Sioux, bloodthirsty enemies of the Pawnee, pounced on the helpless remnant in the cañon below.

About noon that day, while we were at work on our building at Culbertson, we saw about thirty Indians dismounted and lined up on the hill about three hundred yards to the northwest of us, and making great effort to attract our attention. Our party, six in number and well armed, formed in line in front of them and laid our guns on the ground, the Indians doing the same. Then one of our party picked up his gun to indicate that only one of them should take his gun. After some time they understood that we wanted them to meet one of us half way, which was done and they proved to be Pawnee. We motioned for them to all come down, and by this time many of the survivors of the battle were in sight and in less than an hour about two hundred of them had gathered around us. There were squaws, many of them with their papooses strapped to their backs, and old men and young, all crying and pleading for protection, making a pitiful sight indeed. Their story was short. The attack was made from the west bank of the cañon, about the center of the camp, separating the occupants, a part of whom retreated northeast to the Frenchman and the rest down the cañon to the Republican. They met again at and below the mouth of the Frenchman. The Sioux followed them until long after dark. The fight or massacre occurred about nine or ten o'clock on the morning of August 5, 1873. The next morning we were on the battleground early, and the sight that greeted us will never be forgotten. The dead were scattered along the narrow cañon, half a mile or more. Seven bodies were piled in a pool of water, six

behind a small knoll on the side of the cañon, where they had taken refuge. Men, women and children lay scattered here and there, all scalped. One child about two years old had been scalped alive. About the 24th of the month a company of soldiers came from Ft. McPherson and buried the victims, sixty-five in number, in one hole in the side of the cañon, caving the bank in on them. The condition of the bodies after lying in the hot sun for twenty days must be imagined. We raised them up with a pitchfork, tied one end of a rope around each body, fastened the other end to the horn of a saddle and then dragged them to the grave. Several bodies were found afterward along the line of retreat, one of the wounded died near Culbertson, another at Indianola, and perhaps many others on the way to their reservation and after their arrival. Notwithstanding that the history fakers of the East would have it that the entire band was massacred, the loss did not exceed one hundred. The most notable of the dead were Sky Chief and Pawnee Mary, a white woman.

It has been said that the loss of the Sioux was never known, but I think we have almost positive proof that only six of them were killed. During the month of September we were hunting on the Frenchman and camped one night in the mouth of a cañon, about three miles west of the place where Palisade is now situated. In this cañon there were many large trees containing a considerable number of Indians, buried according to the Sioux custom of placing their dead on scaffolds in trees. Upon examination we found six that had been dead only a short time, and they had been killed with bullets. All of the Pawnee were killed with arrows, for though the Sioux were well armed with guns they doubtless preferred to use bows and arrows, fearing that the reports of guns might bring back the Pawnee hunters. To make sure that we had found the Sioux that were killed in the fight we followed their trail which led direct to the battle field.

THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE

[Address of Mr. James Mooney of the Bureau of American Ethnology at the annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society, January 18, 1910.]

The boy starting out in life is eager and enthusiastic for every new enterprise. As responsibilities and cares increase he tries to limit his duties, and after a time he begins to count the disappointments and wonder whether it is all worth while. Then, as the years go by, when his wife is gone, his children buried or married away from him and the old friends, who were his partners in the things of life, are dead, after a while he comes to the place where his dearest joy is to sit down and dream of the days that are past. This is a natural thing and universal in its human application. If it has not come to each one of us, it surely will come. This is the whole meaning of the Indian ghost dance. It is the dwelling upon the days that have gone before, with the hope that if the past itself cannot return we may find something of it on the other side. We have parallels in earlier periods of our own history in the shape of religious revivals or spiritual ecstacies which spread over great areas or among several nations at once. There have been several similar revivals of Indian thought and fervor in different parts of America in aboriginal times. One notable instance occurs in the history of Peru where, in 1781, a descendant of the ancient Inca kings arose among the Indians, preaching the doctrine that the old native empire was soon to be restored and that the hated Spanish conquerers and the whole white race would disappear from the earth. The result was a terrible war ending at last in the capture and death of the Inca and his chief supporters.

When France surrendered Canada to England the native tribes continued the struggle on their own account for some years, owing largely to the influence of a prophet who had arisen among them preaching a return to the old Indian customs and warning them that they had lost their lands and dominion because they had abandoned their native customs for those of the white man. He taught that the only way to recover their lost heritage was to throw away the tools and customs of the white man and return to the Indian dress and life, even discarding guns for the old-time bow and arrow. It was a very hard thing for them to do, but in a large measure they did it. That doctrine was taken up by nearly every tribe from the Alleghenies then the Indian frontier to the headwaters of the Mississippi river. The result was Pontiac's war. The same doctrine of return to the old Indian life was revived by the Shawnee prophet forty years later, leading up to the battle of Tippecanoe and the general Indian alliance against the Americans in the war of 1812.

About the year 1888 we began to hear of an Indian prophet in Nevada who was preaching to the Indians some new revelation that was not clearly understood among the whites, but believed to be an incitement to a general uprising along the western frontier. The agents and interpreters, not knowing what it meant, as nobody did except the Indians themselves, magnified the matter in such a way that the western people became alarmed. The government was worried about it, and the Indian office made some inquiry, but with no great result. The war department sent an officer to the Kiowa and Cheyenne of Oklahoma to learn what it meant, and, altogether, it looked as though there might be trouble.

Just at this crisis, in 1889, a treaty was negotiated with the Sioux, by which they sold one-half of their great reservation, the remainder being cut up into five smaller