Marking last battle of Native American nations

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http://www.omaha.com/living/passport-nebraska-marking-last-battle-of-native-american-nations/article_423b84a9-8c26-5dd2-b4fe-48b11f62846f.html

By Todd von Kampen / World-Herald correspondent 14 hrs ago

As Plains Indians fought encroaching white settlers after the Civil War, another centuries-old tradition of warfare in the region recorded its last bloody chapter in southwest Nebraska.

A dual memorial near Trenton — a 1999 visitors center and a towering marker placed in 1930 — honors the last battle between Native American nations on U.S. soil: the ambush of Pawnee buffalo hunters and their families by Brulé and Oglala Lakota in “Massacre Canyon” on Aug. 5, 1873.

Long the dominant nation in present-day Nebraska, the Pawnee were farming on a Nance County reservation but left it twice a year to hunt buffalo. As white hunters laid waste to bison herds, Pawnee parties started entering hunting grounds of the Lakota, who had warred with them for generations. The Lakota detested Pawnee cooperation with whites against them, most notably by the U.S. Army’s “Pawnee Scouts.”

More than 1,000 Lakota, led by noted Brulé chief Spotted Tail, found about 350 Pawnee in a narrow canyon between the Republican and Frenchman Rivers. They killed leader Sky Chief and drove his men back into their camp.

FULL story at link.