A thousand warriors, ablaze with war paint, stopped at four-month-old Camp Rankin on the South Platte in the winter of 1865.
Sixty soldiers hid in sod huts behind a sod wall 18 feet high, so the warriors ambushed. Ten men, decoys, charged the fort and retreated.
Soldiers poured out of Camp Rankin and chased the decoys for three miles. Then trigger-happy young braves, hidden behind nearby bluffs, couldn't wait to fire. When their guns blasted, the army captain glimpsed hundreds of Indians half-hidden behind the bluffs. He wheeled his horse; so did his soldiers. Warriors swarmed from the bluffs, in hot pursuit.
Happily for the soldiers, warriors aimed their newfangled guns so high they often missed shots. However, bows and arrows proved deadly. Altogether, eighteen soldiers failed to return to the fort.
"We killed sixty Indians!" the soldiers claimed. No, they killed none, insisted the warriors.
Coming April 28, 7-9 p.m.
The Apollon, 1801 Vinton St., Omaha
THIEVES, RASCALS & SORE LOSERS:
The Unsettling History of the Dirty
Deals that Helped Settle Nebraska
by Marilyn June Coffey
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