SEPT 2: The Battle of Ash Hollow

Brig. General William S. Harney. (Credit: National Archive)

On Sept. 2-3, 1855, U.S. Army detachments under Brigadier General William S. Harney defeat a band of Brule Lakota led by Little Thunder at the Battle of Ash Hollow, also known as the Battle of Blue Water Creek, in present-day Garden County Nebraska. It was a punitive expedition in retaliation for the prior summer’s Grattan massacre.

That fight occurred on August 19, 1854, when a small U.S. Army detachment led by Lieutenant John Grattan entered a large Lakota Sioux camp to arrest a tribal member for killing a settler's cow. After a confrontation, the soldiers shot the Lakota chief Conquering Bear, leading to the Lakota returning fire and killing Grattan and all 29 of his soldiers. 

Harney’s 600 soldiers attacked 250 Sioux, killing 86 and capturing 70 women and children.

It drew the attention of the New York Times, which tied Harney’s actions to a recent increase in the size of U.S. Army forces on the Plains.

On October 25, the Times wrote: “The Indian massacre by Harney’s command proves the justice of the objections raised in Congress to the increase of the army. This miserable and treacherous butchery was perpetrated, perhaps, by way of vindicating the necessity of the new regiments. It is not unlikely that some further outrages will be committed in order to convince Congress of the expediency of very large appropriations to meet the contingencies of Indian wars.”