Battle of Ash Hollow

Part of the First Sioux War, American Indian Wars

An 1878 depiction of the Battle of Ash Hollow.

Date	September 3, 1855
Location	Ash Hollow, Nebraska
Result	United States victory

Belligerents

Brulé

United States

Commanders and leaders

Little Thunder

William S. Harney

Strength

~250

~600

Casualties and losses

86 killed, 70 women and children captured

27 killed

The Battle of Ash Hollow, also known as the Battle of Blue Water Creek or the Harney Massacre, was an engagement of the First Sioux War, fought on September 2 and 3, 1855 between United States Army soldiers under Brigadier General William S. Harney and a band of the Brulé Lakota along the Platte River in present-day Garden County, Nebraska. The town of Lewellen, Nebraska was developed here in the 20th century as a railroad stop.

The battle, which the American force won while killing Brulé women and children as well as warriors, was a punitive expedition for the "Grattan Massacre" in August 1854 and for raids by Lakota in its wake.

The battle was the defining engagement of a short war between the United States and the Sioux over disputes concerning violations of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. In this battle, 600 soldiers attacked 250 Sioux, killing 86 people and capturing 70 women and children. In March 1856, without jurisdiction to do so, commanding General William Harney negotiated a peace treaty to stop further bloodshed with the Sioux and create a centralized tribal government among the Lakota, by which he intended to hold leaders accountable for the actions of bands. The people were highly decentralized.

While the battle was hailed by many newspapers as a heroic victory over the Indians, the New York Times called it a massacre and other critics decried it as "outright butchery," because of the killings of women and children.

"The lamentable butcheries of Indians by Harney's command on the Plains have excited the most painful feelings," wrote a 'New York Times' correspondent in an 1855 dispatch from Washington. "The so-called battle was simply a massacre, but whether those Indians were really the same who have cut off emigrant trains with so many circumstances of savage cruelty, or whether it is possible to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty in retaliating these outrages, are points on which we have no reliable information."

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Wikipedia