While nominally the head of all the Sioux during the great wars along the Trail, the activities were largely in the hands of the war loving members of the tribe, who with their independent bands moved without orders from the supreme head.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

The experience of the United States at the close of the Black Hawk wars in the valley of the Mississippi, was so successful, that the same plan was followed with Spotted Tail. In 1872, he was taken to Washington by our military, and there he met General Grant, who was then President of the United States.

He was convinced of the uselessness of combatting the white people, and he told his people that they were as numerous as the sands of the prairie, and to emphasize the comparative strength of his people with the whites, he cast a handful of sand into the original bank from which it came.

In 1876, General Crook crowned him "King of All the Sioux," which title he maintained with dignity until 1881, when he was killed at the Rosebud Agency, by Crow Dog, one of his sub-chiefs.

Names in Indian life are certainly an indication of character, for one naturally expects the assassin of a truly great Indian, to bear some such cognomen as "Crow Dog."

While Spotted Tail was inclined to peace, while he would rather take his people to the hunting grounds at the head of Spotted Tail creek, or over on the Blue Water ( Snake creek) and there lay in a winter's supply of jerked buffalo meat, he participated in many conflicts and personally led in the massacre of Cottonwood canyon, just a few miles east of North Platte.