Hastily they dressed, and without waiting for orders, grabbed their guns and fiercely attacked the belligerent Indians. The dawn of morning showed that twenty-eight Indians and a number of soldiers were lying dead on the commons east of the barracks. The remaining Indians fled up White River. The women and children were induced to return to the fort, where their wounds were dressed. Many of the women and children had been badly wounded. One squaw was shot twenty-two times,

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

and is still alive and living on Pine Ridge agency. The bucks fled across onto Hat creek, where they were pursued by the soldiers. They finally took refuge in the head of a canyon, where they were impregnably fortified. Artillery was used to shell them out and the little band of twenty-two sacrificed their lives rather than accept exile to a strange land.

How Crazy Horse Died

One of the greatest mysteries of the famous Custer massacre and Sioux war of 1876 was the death of Crazy Horse, one of the principal chiefs and leaders of the rebellious Sioux -- the man above all others who was the evil genius of that stormy period. The telegraph reports sent out from Fort Robinson at the time of his death were contradictory and nebulous. No one seemed to know how he died, while the man who killed him -- William Gentles, of the Fourteenth United States infantry -- died with the secret locked in his bosom. There were only two witnesses to the act, and only one of them is now living. His name is Sergeant William F. Kelly, formerly of the Fourteenth infantry, in recent years a resident of E street, in Washington. The story that he told to a Washington Post reporter of the killing of Crazy Horse had never before been published until Sergeant Kelly had kept the matter a secret for twenty-seven years.