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. In the darkness, the Assinaboines, thinking that she had run on, followed the flight of the torch over the cliff, and all perished. The Cheyennes, the story goes, then used dogs for pack animals, hitching them between thills, and having them drag the packs after the manner later adopted in connection with ponies and mustangs.

In 1840-1841 the Sioux made peace with the Cheyennes, probably the Southern tribes, for they were at peace with the Northern Cheyennes long before 1840. The Southern tribe whose habitat was on the Platte and Laramie, had among them a very old man by the name of Red Cloud. He was a cousin of the Sioux Red Cloud of history. Sioux Red Cloud's father had a brother who married a Northern Cheyenne woman about 1820, and the Cheyenne Red Cloud was their son. This indicates that the Northern Cheyennes and Ogallala Sioux were at peace and intermarrying at that time. This Red Cloud, half Sioux and half Northern Cheyenne, married a Southern Cheyenne woman, and lived with the Southern tribe. This would indicate peaceful and intermarrying relations between the north and south branches existed about 1840 or a little later. It might have been after the peace of 1840-1841.