Book Review: The First Sioux War: The Grattan Fight and Blue Water Creek, 1854-1856

Authors

Mark R. Ellis, University of Nebraska at KearneyFollow

Date of this Version

2006

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:3 (Summer 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

In 1855, General William S. Harney's Sioux Expedition smashed into Little Thunder's Lakota village along Blue Water Creek (Ash Hollow) in western Nebraska. The attack was in retaliation for the killing of Lt. John Grattan and twenty-nine soldiers near Fort Laramie the year before. When the shooting stopped, at least eighty-six Lakotas, including many women and children, lay dead or dying. The violence at Blue Water Creek was part of what both R. Eli Paul and Paul N. Beck call "The First Sioux War." While Red Cloud's War, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the Wounded Knee Massacre are well-known conflicts between the United States Army and the Lakota Indians, the First Sioux War, as both authors argue, has largely been ignored by historians. Paul in Blue Water Creek and the First Sioux War, 1854-1856 and Beck in The First Sioux War: The Grattan Fight and Blue Water Creek, 1854-1856 have provided the first thoroughly researched, book-length examinations of this lesser-known conflict and its consequences for Indian-white relations on the Great Plains.