The Massacre Canyon battle took place in Nebraska on August 5, 1873, near the Republican River. It was one of the last hostilities between the Pawnee () and the Sioux (or Lakota) and the last battle/massacre between Great Plains Indians in North America. The massacre occurred when a large Sioux war party of over 1,500 Oglala, Brulé, and Sihasapa warriors, led by Two Strike, Little Wound, and Spotted Tail attacked a band of Pawnee during their summer buffalo hunt. In the ensuing rout, many Pawnees were killed with estimates of casualties ranging widely from around 50 to over 150. The victims, who were mostly women and children, suffered mutilation and sexual assault.
According to Indian agent John W. Williamson of the Genoa Agency on the Pawnee Reservation, who accompanied the Pawnee hunting party, "On the 2d [in fact the 3d] day of July, 1873, the Indians, to the number of 700, left Genoa for the hunting grounds. Of this number 350 were men, the balance women and children." Williamson stated that 156 Pawnee were killed though numbers vary by source. This massacre ranked among "the bloodiest attacks by the Sioux" in Pawnee history. Cruel and violent warfare like this had been practiced against the Pawnee by the Lakota Sioux for centuries since the mid-1700s and through the 1840s. Attacks increased further in the 1850s until 1875. The Pawnee villages and Quaker agency near Genoa were attacked by the Lakota months and years prior to the massacre without US Government protection that had been promised in the 1857 Treaty with the Pawnee.
The Pawnee were traveling along the west bank of the canyon, which runs south to the Republican River, when they were attacked. "A census taken at the Pawnee Agency in September, according [to] Agent Burgess..." (see "Massacre Canyon Monument" article in External Links section) found that "71 Pawnee warriors were killed, and 102 women and children killed", the victims brutally mutilated and scalped and others even set on fire"The Chicago Tribune, Saturday, August 30, 1873; New York Times, August 21, 1873 (reported by William Burgess, Pawnee Indian agent) although Trail Agent John Williamson's account states 156 Pawnee died (page 388). This massacre is by some considered one of the factors that led to the Pawnees' decision to move to a reservation in Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma, though not all sources agree on its impact in this way.
Principal chiefs at the battle were: Pawnee: Sky Chief, Sun Chief, Fighting Bear, Ruling His Son. Sioux: Spotted Tail (Brulé chief) (unclear), Little Wound (Oglala chief), Two Strike (Brulé chief). Chief Charging Bear (John Grass, Sihasapa) .
Among the Pawnee dead were Sky Chief (Tirawahut Lesharo) who was surrounded and killed by the Sioux while skinning a buffalo, and the wife and four children of Traveling Bear, a former sergeant in the Pawnee Scouts who served under Maj. Frank North and was a Medal of Honor recipient.Medal of honor: historical facts & figures By Ron Owens p.52
History
The Pawnee had a long tradition of living in present-day Nebraska.Ludwickson, John: Historic Indian Tribes. Ethnohistory and Archaeology. Nebraska History, Vol. 75, No. 1 (1994), pp. 132-157, p. 140. The Pawnee had been the most populous and perhaps the most powerful tribe in the Nebraska area, with a population of 10,000 to 12,000 around the year 1800. However, smallpox epidemics and increasing Sioux raids on villages beginning in the early 1800s and worsening in the 1830s left the Pawnee in a vulnerable position. In a 1833 treaty with the United States, the Pawnee ceded all of their land south of the Platte River, a vast territory between the Loup, Platte and Republican rivers in Nebraska and south into northern Kansas.Kappler, Charles J.: Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington, 1904. Vol. 2. According to the terms of the 1833 treaty, this land was to remain a "common hunting ground" for the Pawnee and other "friendly Indians," meaning that the Pawnee had non-exclusive treaty rights to hunt buffalo in their former territory. The Massacre Canyon battlefield near Republican River is located within this area. They had suffered continual attacks by the Sioux that increased violently in the early 1840s. Part of the terms of the 1833 treaty prevented the Pawnee from going to war with any neighboring tribes and required the Pawnee to defer to the United States government as the arbiter of disputes and negotiator between tribes, meaning that the Pawnee could not retaliate against the Sioux attacks on their villages without violating the treaty.
In a 1857 treaty, the Pawnee ceded all territory north of the Platte River except for a small reservation on old Pawnee land, present-day Nance County. As part of this treaty, the Pawnee were guaranteed protection by the United States military. No explicit mention is made of the "common hunting ground" established from previously-ceded Pawnee lands as established in the 1833 treaty.
In 1865, in part due to their long rivalry with the Sioux, 95 Pawnee men joined enlisted with the United States military for the Powder River War, a military campaign against the Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne intended to intimidate the tribes. The Pawnee scouts also worked with the Union Pacific Railroad to protect railroad workers during the construction of the transcontinental railroad through Nebraska and Wyoming. These actions by the Pawnee scouts did not improve relations between the Pawnee and Sioux.
In 1868 the Sioux entered into a treaty with the United States and agreed to live in the Great Sioux Reservation in present-day South Dakota. By Article 11 they received a right to hunt along the Republican River, in the same area that the Pawnee retained non-exclusive hunting rights to, almost 200 miles south of their new reservation. While the 1833 treaty with the Pawnee does establish that the former Pawnee lands south of the Platte were intended to be shared with other "friendly Indians," the Pawnee were at war with the Sioux at the time of the signing in 1833 and the United States was at war with the Sioux until 1868, meaning that the granting of hunting rights on this land to the Sioux is of uncertain legality given the ambiguity of the phrase "friendly Indians."
Both the Pawnee and the Sioux complained regularly over attacks by the other tribe.See e.g. Blaine, Royce Martha: Pawnee Passage, 1870-1875. Norman and London, 1990, pp. 82-142. Poole, D.C.: Among the Sioux of Dakota. Eighteen Months' Experience as an Indian Agent, 1868-1870. St. Paul, 1988, pp. 58,62 and 131. Because both tribes had signed treaties explicitly giving power of mediation to the United States government, there was an attempted peace negotiation in 1871 with the United States as intermediary which ultimately failed.Riley, Paul D., “The Battle of Massacre Canyon”. Nebraska History, Vol. 54, No. 2 (1973), pp. 221-249.
In July 1873, a month before the massacre, the Oglala Sioux had been stopped from attacking the Utes in retaliation for stolen horses and the killing of a Sioux man by Antoine Janis, the sub-agent for the band.
Lead-up to the battle
A Pawnee hunting group—roughly 400 men, women and children—were located in camp near present-day Trenton on August 4, 1873. Trail Agent John W. Williamson stayed in the camp with his visitor Lester Beach Platt.
Around the same time in early August, about 700 Brulé Sioux, led by Chief Two Strike, were hunting buffalo in the same area. The Oglala Sioux, led by chiefs Little Wound and Pawnee Killer, were hunting along tributaries of the Republican River west of the Pawnee camp.
Some Oglalas brought news of the big Pawnee camp on August 3. Chief Little Wound told Antoine Janis that he had stopped them from going against the Utes. Now, "the young men had determined to fight" the Pawnees, not to lose men and horses again. Janis replied that he could not prevent the Sioux from attacking the Pawnee but suggested that the two tribes meet to discuss the matter instead which was ignored. Later he told his sister, Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun, that to restrain the warriors "... you might as well stop an avalanche."Bettelyoun, Susan Bordeaux and Josephine Waggoner: With My Own Eyes. A Lakota Woman Tells her People's History. Lincoln and London, 1998, p. 80.
All Sioux tipis in the area got the news. A boy eyewitness recalled many years later that "instantly all the warriors began to get ready to go on the warpath." In his understanding, the warriors were defending their hunting grounds.Standing Bear, Luther, My People, the Sioux. Lincoln, 1975. However, neither the Sioux nor the Pawnee had exclusive right to the hunting grounds. During the day around 1,000 warriors set off for the Pawnee to make a joint, quick attack and prevent the enemy from striking first.
Trail Agent Williamson's account John Williamson, aged 23, was assigned as the Pawnee trail-agent at the Genoa Agency on the Pawnee reservation. He accompanied the Pawnee on their August 1873 hunt. He wrote his recollections of the battle decades after the incident.Paul, R. Eli (ed.), “Lester Beach Platt's Account of the Battle of Massacre Canyon”. Nebraska History, Vol. 67, No. 4 (1986), pp. 381-407."On the fourth day of August we reached the north bank of the Republican River and went into camp. At 9 o'clock that evening, three white men came into camp and reported to me that a large band of Sioux warriors [was] camped 25 miles [40 km] northwest, waiting for an opportunity to attack the Pawnees for several days, anticipating that we would move up the river where buffaloes were feeding. Previous to this, white men visited us and warned us to be on our guard against Sioux attacks, and I was a trifle skeptical as to the truth of the story told by our white visitors. But one of the men, a young man about my age at the time, appeared to be so sincere in his efforts to impress upon me that the warning should be heeded, that I took him to Sky Chief who was in command that day, for a conference. Sky Chief said the men were liars; that they wanted to scare the Pawnees away from the hunting grounds so that white men could kill buffaloes for hides. He told me I was squaw and a coward. I took exception to his remarks, and retorted: 'I will go as far as you dare go. Don't forget that.'
The following morning August 5, we broke camp and started north, up the divide between the Republican and the Frenchman Rivers. Soon after leaving camp, Sky Chief rode up to me and extending his hand said, 'Shake, brother.' He recalled our little unpleasantness the night previous and said he did not believe there was cause for alarm, and was so impressed with the belief that he had not taken the precaution to throw out scouts in the direction the Sioux were reported to be. A few minutes later a buffalo scout signaled that buffaloes had been sighted in the distance, and Sky Chief rode off to engage in the hunt. I never saw him again. He had killed a buffalo and was skinning it when the advance guard of the Sioux shot and wounded him. The Chief attempted to reach his horse, but before he was able to mount, several of the enemy surrounded him. He died fighting. A Pawnee, who was skinning a buffalo a short distance away but managed to escape, told me how Sky Chief died."
The battle The morning of August 5 the Pawnees went up a canyon. Men looking for game took the lead and the families followed with loaded down packhorses. A number of the Pawnee huntsmen in front seem to have been the first fatalities, lured into a Sioux trap by a decoy.
The Pawnee prepared for defense. Agent Williamson and either his friend Platt or tribal member Ralph Weeks rode out to arrange a peace council, but bullets forced them back.