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The Battle of Lightning Creek #ThisWeekInWyHistory

These nine men were arrested for murder, but the charges were later dropped.

(Gillette, Wyo.) On Oct. 31, 1903, four Native Americans, a Native American’s wife whose race is unclear, a sheriff, and a deputy all died in a battle in Weston County.

The Battle of Lightning Creek began when Indian Agent John R. Brennan issued passes to two separate groups of Oglala families, who planned to make customary plant-gathering trips to the Black Hills of South Dakota. One group was led by a man named Eagle Feather and the other was led by a man named William Brown.

There’s some speculation that the groups were planning on hunting, and Brennan should have known this, but survivors from the groups later testified they never did any hunting or ever intended to hunt.

Sometime between Oct. 20 and Oct. 22, Weston County Sheriff William Miller received a tip that a hunting party composed of Native Americans were illegally killing antelope slaughtering ranchers’ cattle in the southern part of Weston and northern part of Converse Counties.

State game laws required nonresidents to pay a $50 gun-license fee and hire a local guide to hunt. Sheriff Miller rounded up a posse and went in search of the alleged offenders, who were supposedly hunting without the proper license.

On Oct. 20, after a week-long search, the posse found the Eagle Feather and William Brown groups camped together on a dry fork of the Cheyenne River in Converse County, a little more than one hundred miles west of Pine Ridge.

With warrant in hand, Sheriff Miller had planned to arrest the group. This is the point where details form into two different versions of events. According to Miller’s version, Brown had agreed to go to Newcastle. Brown testified he agreed to go but never had any idea he was being arrested.

Eagle Feather, on the other hand, told the sheriff in so many words to go you know what to himself, according to the Oglala accounts. Miller, however, got it in his head that everyone had agreed to go to Newcastle. When Eagle Feather’s group split off to head home to Pine Ridge, Miller went to go grab reinforcements from neighboring ranches.

All witnesses agreed that the sheriff’s men took positions behind the creek bank, parallel to the road the Oglala wagons were traveling on. Whether this position was meant as an ambush or as a defensive move is unclear.

What is also unclear is who fired first. The Oglala claimed it was the sheriff’s men, and the sheriff’s men would claim it was the Native Americans. Once the shootings started, it was over in five minutes. Peter White Elk, Black Kettle, Gray Bear, and Deputy Louis Falkenberg were dead. Eagle Feather and his wife, Susie, would later die from their wounds.

Nine men from Pine Ridge were arrested for the incident, but since no positive identification could be made of the prisoners, they were released after a preliminary hearing in Douglas. None of the members of the sheriff’s posse were ever charged.

While most people contend that the Battle of Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee were the last armed conflicts between Sioux and whites, many say it was the Battle of Lightning Creek right here in Wyoming.

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