After the looting of Bordeaux and Chouteau trading posts, the Indians took the body of their dead chief, and went over on the Niobrara, where he was wrapped in rich robes and put in a burial tree.

Activities of Spotted Tail .and Little Thunder, after the Grattan Massacre, brought General Harney to Fort Laramie with re-inforcements from Fort Kearney.

Little Thunder became the nominal chief after the death of Mato-i-o-way, with Spotted Tail second in command. Harney heard that the Indians under Little Thunder were committing depreciations along the river, and while there was some foundation for the reports, it was also an opportunity for him to distinguish

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

himself. He therefore proceeded to Ash Hollow to settle the score.

Details of battles, of which generally only a brief sketch is given, make them the more interesting. In the battle of Ash Hollow, which really occurred on the Blue, in Garden county, there were Philip St. George Cooke, the interesting chronicler, and Alexander Schlegel, the surveyor, who later served in the interior department at Washington, and who but recently returned to Lincoln where he resides (1919). From Cooke's writings and from Schlegel personally I was told the story of the battle. D. W. Butler of Washington, D. C, has also written an extensive letter concerning it.

Little Thunder was in charge at the time General Harney with his powerful force, came into the North River country. Little Thunder was not anxious to fight, and wished to parley. He had with him on the Blue, forty-one lodges of Brules (or Burnt Thighs), and eleven lodges of Ogallalas, (or Dust Throwers). According to regular count this would indicate 326 Brules, of which 65 were braves, and 88 Ogallalas, of which seventeen would be braves. Harney had 1200 troops, infantry, cavalry and some artillery.