Battle of Ash Hollow
The Battle of Ash Hollow , also known as the Battle of Blue Water Creek , denotes a battle that took place on September 2 and 3, 1855 between US troops and Brulé - Lakota , an Indian tribe in western Nebraska in the United States , and at which about 85 Indians were killed.
Historical background
On August 19, 1854, an incident occurred that went down in history as the Grattan massacre . In what is now eastern Wyoming , Lieutenant John L. Grattan, 30 soldiers, and an interpreter were killed by Brulé. In the late summer of 1854, 4,000 Brulé and Oglala camped near Fort Laramie to receive their annual supply that was guaranteed to them in the first Fort Laramie treaty in 1851 . A cow from the neighboring Oregon Trail got lost in the Brulé camp, where it was captured and killed. The owner of the cow, a Mormon , complained in the fort and demanded that the perpetrator be punished. The inexperienced Lieutenant Grattan was ordered to arrest the guilty Indian and bring him to the fort. He rode with his troops to the Indian camp to see Chief Conquering Bear of the Brulé, who offered the whites a horse as compensation. But Grattan did not enter into any negotiation. When Conquering Bear was about to leave the meeting, indignant at the insults of the drunken interpreter, he was shot in the back by one of the soldiers and killed. In the following exchange of fire, Lieutenant Grattan, 29 soldiers and an interpreter were killed. Only one soldier survived the battle seriously injured, but later died in the fort.
When news of this event reached the War Department, it was decided to send a punitive expedition . The 53-year-old William Selby Harney , a veteran and war hero of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) , was appointed as commander . Harney had to be called back from Paris because his family lived in the French capital. In Fort Kearney, where parts of his old unit from the Mexican War were stationed, he assembled a force of 600 men and went out on August 24, 1855 to punish the Sioux .
The battle
On September 3, the punitive expedition reached Blue Water Creek, a tributary of the Platte River in western Nebraska, on the banks of which about 250 Brulé men, women and children were encamped. After Harney's request to extradite the culprits of the Grattan massacre was denied, he gave the order to attack and rode into the middle of the camp. Some of the Brulé fled into caves on the riverbank and the soldiers fired into them indiscriminately, killing many women and children. A group of armed warriors broke through the American line of attack and were chased for hours by the cavalrymen. The Brulé under Chief Little Thunder, the successor to Conquering Bear, were hopelessly inferior and lost 85 tribal members, including many women and children.
After the battle, the US Army demonstrated its strength and demonstratively crossed the Lakota area without encountering any resistance. Crazy Horse , later a famous chief, was a child at the time and survived the battle that went down in American history as the Battle of Ash Hollow . With the Sioux, General Harney was then called the Butcher. While the battle was hailed as a heroic victory in many US press newspapers , others criticized the event as pure slaughter of the Indians. There were also those who said that the punitive expedition was sent out simply to justify the growth of the US Army at the instigation of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis .
See also
Indian wars , time table of the Indian wars
Web links
- September 3, 1855 (English)
- Stand at Blue Water (English)