"I pray you on my knees, Sir," Victor Vifquain wrote to Major General Edward Canby "let me go fight the Indians and protect all that is dear to me, my wife and children, or die with them in the attempt."
The dreaded event happened August 7, 1864. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho struck ranches along Nebraska's Little Blue River. When the raids stopped, thirty-eight settlers lay dead, nine wounded, five captured.
This began "the worst Indian raid in Nebraska history."
Hundreds of warriors struck along a 300-mile stretch of the Oregon Trail, from the Little Blue River all the way to Julesburg in Colorado Territory.
They attacked thirty stagecoach stations, 150 ranches, innumerable homesteaders' cabins. They killed and scalped men, took women and children captive.
Wires hummed from coast to coast with stunning news of butchery.
Frantic, Vifquain tried to find out if Caroline and their children had survived. Just twenty-five miles separated their Big Blue River homestead from the bloodbath on the Little Blue.
Coming soon in
THIEVES, RASCALS & SORE LOSERS
by Marilyn June Coffey
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