The Sioux would have undoubtedly followed the business had it not been for the interference of the white trader, who took it over entirely.

In 1814-15 the Sioux and Kiowas were at war, and a decisive battle was fought on Kiowa creek in the west part of the present Scotts Bluff county. Here the Kiowas wrere beaten and retired into the mountains. They later went south and joined the Comanches and have thoroughly amalgamated therewith. Their last raid into the "North River" country was when they burned the trading post in Robideaux Gap.

A story going back to 1730, tells of the Cheyennes. Originally they were far away, west of the great lakes. In the course of their migrations, driven ahead of the Sioux, they built a village on the banks of the Cheyenne river. This river rises in Wyoming and runs eastward, skirting the south border of Black Hills from Edgemont to the Missouri.

At this time the Cheyennes had built mud huts and their habitations had a sense of permanency. Possibly they seized and occupied the "Paduca" villages. One day, the entire village, with the exception of one old woman who was too old to travel, went on a buffalo hunt. These hunts often extended for several days, and it was during their absence that their old enemies, the Assinaboines, whose habitat is

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

now in northern Montana, raided their village. They attacked at night, and at their sudden approach the old woman, who was grinding bones in an improvised mortar, and had a torch of pitch pine stuck down her back, with the upper end alight, started to run toward the river. The village was situated upon a bluff. As she approached its precipitous shore with the Assinaboines in close pursuit, she took the torch from her back and threw it far out over the cliff, and she herself hid by the pathway that led down to the water.