We left the city of Columbus in the afternoon of October 13, 1921 with a frontier soldier of fifty years ago, captain of Pawnee Indian scouts, rider in desperate charges into hostile camps--Lute H. North of Columbus.

Our course was southwest, following the trail of the Pawnee tribe as it set out on its last Nebraska buffalo hunt in July, 1873. It is forty-eight years since Williamson and his Pawnee had a most tragic experience in one of the Giant's fingers, and we were about to retrace the steps--

In the early morning of August 5, 1873 the Pawnee nation broke camp on the Republican a few miles west of where Trenton now stands and started on its last day's hunt for buffalo.

There were three hundred warriors, four hundred women and children, twelve hundred ponies and a thousand dogs. They had had successful hunts on the Beaver and the Driftwood. Already their ponies were well loaded with dried buffalo and robes. The day before three white men had come to their camp and told Mr. Williamson that Sioux warriors had been watching the Pawnee for several days and that a large party of them were camped close by on the Frenchman. Sky Chief, leader of the Pawnee, had answered. "the White men wish the Pawnee to leave the buffalo for them to kill. The Great Father gave us leave to hunt for three moons. We will make one more drive of buffalo and then return with plenty of meat to our village on the Loup."

A mile long that early August morning the Pawnee nation trailed across the divide, going northeast. Soon buffalo were seen coming from the northwest over the crest of the hill toward the Pawnee. Eagerly the Pawnee hunters rode out to the chase. As they approached the buffalo a transformation took place. Part of the buffalo became, by throwing off the buffalo robes which concealed them, a band of Sioux riding in wide war circles and shooting at the Pawnee. "There's only a few Sioux. We can whip them" shouted the Pawnee chiefs as they summoned their fighting men. Near at hand was a deep ravine. Into it were hurried the Pawnee women, children, dogs and pack ponies. As they sought refuge there the skyline to the north and west swarmed with hostile Sioux. Round they rode in circles firing as they rode.

There were two white men with the Pawnee camp, one a young man from the east who had begged to go on the hunt. When he saw the Sioux, he fled. Williamson, the other white man bore the written authority of the United States to conduct the Pawnee on their hunt, and to preserve peace. The Sioux chiefs had signed a treaty of peace at Fort Laramie five years before. In their own camp at this very time was Nick Janis, of French descent, married to a Sioux squaw and comissioned in the same manner as Williamson to conduct Sioux buffalo hunt and keep the peace.

Williamson tied a handkerchief at the end of a pole, raised it and rode out to stop the Sioux, hoping that the U. S. commission which he held could effect this. A shower of arrows and bullets from the circling warriors showed how vain the hope. Sky Chief, leader of the Pawnee, had before the onset of the Sioux dashed off in pursuit of a buffalo to a ravine far to the northeast and there was killed and scalped without knowledge of the desperate situation of his people. As Williamson rode back a bullet struck his pony. The poor beast stumbled on a few more yards and fell at the edge of the ravine which sheltered the Pawnee women and children. As he stripped the saddle from the dying pony he swept the battlefield with one searching glance which forever fixed it in his memory:
On either flank the Sioux warriors were rapidly advancing to envelope the Pawnee. Below in the fork of the canyon, the Pawnee women were standing in a circle with arms uplifted chanting the ancient tribal song--a prayer for victory.

Wave upon wave of Sioux warriors circled nearer and nearer. Arrows and bullets flew thick and fast. The plains filled with hundreds of Sioux. The Pawnee warriors were everywhere driven back. A desperate situation surely for Williamson and his Pawnee.

No chanted prayer to Tirawa availed in that desperate hour. "Fly from the Sioux" rose the cry in the ravine, for their enemy was upon them. Cutting packs and tepee poles loose from their ponies the disastrous flight down the ravine began. Some, warriors and women, refused to fly. They sought refuge in deep holes dug by the flood torrents in the bottom of the ravine. Everyone of these was cut off and scalped. The larger part of the Pawnee who perished were found on this part of the battlefield.

Three miles Massacre Canyon winds to the point where it opens into the Republican valley. Headlong toward this opening the Pawnee camp fled. All was confusion. Warriors, squaws, children, dogs, ponies in a mingled mass. Along the bluff rode the Sioux firing into the fugitives below. The bottom of the ravine where the fight began is 150 yards wide. Half a mile below it narrows to a gorge barely wide enough for a trail. Here the flood of humanity and beasts choked the gorge and many perished. Farther down a similar gorge was the cause of another slaughter.

An incident of this flight is burned into Mr. Williamson's memory. A little Indian baby, two or three years old, had fallen from her mother's back and stretched but her hands in vain to the panic-stricken rout begging to be taken with them. After the fight a number of partly burned bodies of Pawnee children were found near this place. The Sioux had evidently stacked them up and tried to obliterate them.

Probably every Pawnee would have perished had it not been for the appearance of a column of United States Cavalry coming up the Republican Valley, bearing at its head the old flag. From the hilltop the Sioux warriors spied this sooner than the Pawnee fleeing down the ravine, and checked the pursuit.

As the mob of Pawnee warriors, squaws, children, dogs and ponies poured out of the mouth of Massacre Canyon into the broad valley of the Republican the pursuing Sioux rounded up several hundred loose Pawnee ponies and vanished with them over the hills to the north.

The army officers urged that the remaining Pawnee return to the battlefield under cavalry escort and retake abandoned food and equipage. To this they would not listen.

They said the food would be poisoned and the equipment destroyed. The Pawnee nation suffered in this battle the most terrible defeat by the Sioux in its tribal history. One hundred and fifty-six had perished. Most of their ponies and camp outfit was lost. Nothing for them to do but to go back to the old home on the Loup overwhelmed with the most terrible disaster they had known. The grief of the survivors was heart rending. The squaws wailed the lamentation for the dead. The stolid warriors tore their hair while tears ran do their faces. In distress, hunger and humiliation those who escaped turned their faces homeward, never again to return on their tribal hunt in the Republican Valley.

Forty-eight years is a long time in the life of the frontier. On the morning of October 15, 1921 we were on the battle field. From every quarter across the divide came automobiles concentrating on the canyon where the battle began. Hundreds of men, women and children thronged the hillsides looking down the dark ravine where the pride of the Pawnee were crushed by the Sioux. A platoon of boy scouts from Trenton eagerly scanned the sod finding a few fragments from the far off fight. Editors of newspapers from Trenton and Culbertson were there. A thin thread of smoke along the Republican Valley was evidence of the Burlington fast mail bound for Denver. At the canyon's edge stood Scout Williamson and Captain North, near the spot where Williamson's pony was shot from under him in the battle. Below were the forks of the canyon where the Pawnee women stood with bare heads under that August sun of 1873 and chanted their prayer--the old time Pawnee prayer for victory. Alas, not the only women who have prayed for victory in war, for the life of their soldiers, In vain!

We gathered in eager group at the canyon's edge and listened to Williamson tell the story of the last battle between the Sioux and Pawnee nations. He had told it many times since he saw it, but never before as he told it that October morning for his feet were on the battlefield, his eyes ranging the hills where the hostile Sioux charged and circled. Below in the forks of the canyon stood a fleet of automobiles. The sympathetic ear listened as though to catch the chant of the Pawnee women. The Past and the Present were blended while we listened to the story and renewed the recollections of the old Nebraska days.

Never again on Nebraska prairies the useless feud of red men fighting each other for buffalo hunting ground. To the historian, the novelist, the poet, the dramatist belong those years of romance and mystery. All too soon the last eye that saw them will be closed, the last witness which told their tale will be silent.

Here some day shall arise a monument fit to halt the traveler's journey and claim his attention and sympathy. Upon its granite shoulder shall be deeply cut an inscription reminding the generations yet to be of these tribes which once found home upon these plains, of their customs, their religion, the arts, their struggles, and of this last great conflict between the two greatest of these Nebraska tribes--the Pawnee and the Sioux.