January 27, 1864, Brig. Gen. Mitchell telegraphed military commanders from Fort Kearny in Nebraska to Julesburg, Colorado, and ordered them to set the prairie on fire. As the sun slipped out of the sky, soldiers fired the prairie along 300 miles.
The fires raced across the prairie, coaxed by a strong northwest wind. Soon they joined in one huge blaze. It "rolled as a vast confluent sheet of flame to the south," Eugene F. Ware remembered.
The fire spread, as Brig. Gen. Mitchell planned, until it enveloped the Republican River refuge of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.
The Indians no doubt saw it coming. "Lightning," they must have thought since lightning commonly ignites prairie fires. At any rate, they split.
The brilliant flames kept right on sizzling. Blazing bluestem leaped high to embrace the wind, and the wind stayed true to Brig. Gen. Mitchell. It blew the conflagration south until flames even reached the Texas panhandle in spots.
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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