1855 - Indian Wars: In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village, killing 100 men, women, and children.
It is interesting to see all the background prior to the civil war. This is the first major clash with the Sioux? It is a response to this incident which could have been avoided http://www.legendsofamerica.com/wy-grattanfight.html
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ne-indianbattles.html
Blue Water/Ash Hollow Battle (1855) - Called the Blue Water Battle or the Ash Hollow Battle, it was the first major clash between U.S. soldiers and the Sioux Indians. In 1855, to punish the Sioux for their depredations following the Grattan Fight near Fort Laramie, Wyoming the previous year, the Army sent out Colonel William S. Harney and an expedition of 600 men from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Sioux village of Little Thunder in Blue Water Creek Valley, just above the creek’s junction with the North Platte River. By a circuitous route dragoons entered the valley and advanced downstream, while Harney and a force of infantrymen marched up the valley from the Platte. Attacked from two directions on September 3, 1855, the Indians scattered, but not before the troops killed 80 warriors, wounded five, and captured 70 women and children. Four soldiers met death and seven suffered wounds.
The rest of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne in the vicinity managed to avoid the troops. The latter moved northwestward to Fort Laramie, Wyoming and marched over the Fort Laramie-Fort Pierre Road through the heart of Sioux country to Fort Pierre, South Dakota on the Missouri River. There, they joined part of the expedition that had come up the Missouri River and spent the winter of 1855-56. For almost a decade most of the Sioux gave no further serious trouble. The site is in privately owned, but the 40-acre Ash Hollow State Historical Park overlooks the battlefield. It is located in Garden County on U.S. Highway 26, 1 ½ miles west of Lewellen, Nebraska.
Thanks for this history. It gives me a little of the background for the early episodes of the biography of Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz which I am now reading. Crazy Horse was a boy of about 12 at the time of these episodes and seems to have witnessed them. Mari grew up on the Niobrara River near the reservation & listened in when the old Indians came to visit & talk with her father.
Unsurprisingly, there are streets named both Harney and Leavenworth in Omaha, Nebraska.