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.
Cottonwood Camp has been built by Eugene Ware in 1864, at the mouth of this canyon of the same name, and here a company of soldiers were kept. Smallpox had been on one of its periodical raids more deadly than Indians along The Trail. Captain Mitchell, and parties of the military named Bentz, Anderson and Cramer, and a number of convalescent soldiers went up the canyon, in the autumn of 1865 to gather wild plums. There had been no signs of hostiles for sometime and they felt secure. Mitchell and Anderson wTere the only two to carry arms.
As they started to return on that beautiful autumn afternoon, the Indians were observed pouring into the canyon to head them off. Mr. Bentz, who was mounted on a fine black horse, rode ahead with such surprising rapidity and suddenness, that he passed the closing gap of Indians, and escaped unharmed amid a fusilade of bullets and flying arrows.