By William H. Benson
The Parallel Lives
Of The NOBLE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS THINKERS AND BELIEVERS:
Roger Williams VS. Cotton Mathers
NEW ARTICLES
Battle of the Blue Water
Anthropologists divide the Lakota Sioux into seven bands. One band is called the Brulé or the Sicangu, or the Burnt Thighs. In August of 1854, a village of the Brulé people, led by chief Conquering Bear, were encamped along the North Platte River just into Wyoming.
One day, a cow that belonged to a Mormon settler wandered into the Brulé camp and one of the band’s warriors, High Forehead, shot and killed the cow. He wanted to eat steak.
Conquering Bear rode the ten miles to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, midway between Lingle and Guernsey, Wyoming, and offered a horse to the Mormon settler as compensation for his cow.
Lieutenant John Grattan, 24-years-old and fresh out out West Point, was determined to arrest High Forehead. He and 29 soldiers marched to the Brulé camp, and demanded the warrior.
One U.S. Army soldier panicked and fired a first shot. The Brulé warriors surrounded Grattan and the other 29 soldiers and shot them. Conquering Bear also was killed during the melee.
In November of 1854, three Brulé warriors assaulted a mail coach near Fort Laramie, and killed three white men, taking the coach’s gold.
The Brulé, now led by Chief Little Thunder, headed east into Nebraska to hunt buffalo.
Reports of these two incidents enraged government officials back east. President Franklin Pierce assigned Brigadier General William S. Harney to lead an attack upon the Lakota Brulé.
Blue Water Creek begins in central Garden County, Nebraska, and runs more or less straight south until it joins the North Platte River just west of Lewellen, Nebraska. North of that junction a mere three or so miles is where the Lakota Brulé were encamped in early September 1855.
A sixteen-page article, with text and colored pictures about the Battle of Blue Water, appeared last November in the magazine, the Smithsonian, published by the Washington D.C. museum.
Tim Madigan, the article’s author, wrote,
“Some 40 tepees, home to about 200 people, stood beside the water. Women would have been at work tanning hides for tepees, moccasins, shirts, and breeches, and drying and curing meat for the coming northern winter. Warriors would have seen to weapons and horses.”
On September 3, the Lakota Brulé women and men looked to the southern horizon and saw General Harney and his troops riding their way. Fearing for their lives, the women pulled down their tepees, grabbed their buffalo hides and cured meat, and fled north.
Chief Little Thunder negotiated with Harney, but the General ordered his soldiers to attack.
By accounts written later, the Battle of Blue Water was a massacre, for 86 Lakota Brulé men, women, and children were killed, but only four U.S. Army soldiers.
A 25-year-old officer and West Point graduate named Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, a mapmaker who did not take part in the attack, recorded in his diary the atrocities he witnessed.
“After getting to camp I dressed their wounds. The feeling of sympathy for the wounded women and children and deep regret for their being so, I found universal. It could not be helped.”
At the massacre’s site, Warren collected dozens of Brulé handcrafted items, including dolls, moccasins, buckskin pants, feather bonnets, and war shirts, taken “from the bodies of the slain.”
He carried the artifacts back east in 1856, and donated the 69 items to the Smithsonian.
In recent years, the descendants of Chief Little Thunder—Karen, Phil, and Harry Little Thunder—have asked Smithsonian officials to return the Warren donations to the Lakota people.
On August 27, 2025, Tim Madigan wrote a followup article for the Smithsonian and reported that Smithsonian officials turned over the Warren donations to the Lakota people during that last week of August, just over two weeks ago, in time for the 170th anniversary of the Battle.
For the next two years, the Lakota will store the donations in a building atop a hill at the Ash Hollow State Historical Park, perhaps a dozen miles south of the battle site, until “the Lakota people decide their ultimate disposition. Only the Lakota will have access to them.”
Smallpox
Called “the most dreadful scourge of the human species,” smallpox begins with fever, muscle pain, headache, and fatigue. Days later lesions will appear first inside the mouth and on the tongue, and later, lesions will attack the skin on forehead, face, trunk, and arms.
The Road to 9-11
During the 1990’s, the Clinton administration received sufficient warnings that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, intended to continue to carry out attacks upon U. S. citizens and their property, by enlisting suicide bombers.
Afghanistan
The United States will depart Afghanistan on Aug. 31, after almost 20 years of nation-building, the most recent foreign power to surrender that harsh, cold, Himalayan terrain, “the graveyard of empires,” back to the Afghan people.
The British tried three times to tame the poor but fierce Afghan fighters. In the first Afghan War, 1839-1840,
Euclid’s Elements
The Greek mathematician Euclid, who wrote Elements of Geometry, “the most successful textbook of all time,” around 300 BCE, in Alexandria, in Egypt, in northern Africa. Lincoln though took to heart Euclid’s talent for making sense out of the bewildering. Euclid started with 35 definitions, a handful of postulates, a dozen or more axioms, a series of postulates, and argued for a set of theorems, all about triangles, lines, angles, squares, and circles.
Plagues
Rarely do men and women seem free, even for a moment, from the evils that have plagued human beings for millennium: war, poverty, famine, slavery, racism, diseases, pestilence, and natural disasters.
The U.S. armed forces first attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and now, the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down after two decades, wars that have cut short many human lives and caused painful, debilitating injuries. On the horizon is a menacing conflict with China.
Iceland
In recent days a native Icelander named Egill Bjarnason published a book, “How Iceland Changed the World.” I wonder about that title’s bold claim, but nonetheless he writes well, is entertaining.
He begins with the Vikings, and then steps forward, chapter by chapter, until he finishes in the 21st century. Along the way, he brings in plenty of fascinating details about the island’s towns, people, weather, government, and the Northern Lights, an enjoyable and readable geography primer.
Older Posts
Patriot vs. Loyalist
As the year 1776 unfolded, American colonists were confronted with the question of independence. Some favored it, others rejected it, and a third group remained uncommitted.
Juneteenth
You and I, and all others who claim American citizenship, now have reason to celebrate a new Federal holiday, Juneteenth, our 12th legal public holiday.
Last week, on Tuesday, June 15, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to make June 19, or Juneteenth, a national holiday. On Wednesday, June 16, the House passed it with only 14 “no” votes.
On Thursday, June 17, President Joe Biden signed into law the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the White House’s East Room.
Equations
How does one recognize great writing in a novel, a work of history, or a scientific treatise? The typical answers include: if it sells 5,000 copies, if it makes the “New York Times Best Seller” list, if it wins a literary prize, if a literary critic gives his or her stamp of approval, or if it is printed for decades.
Tulsa Race Riot Marks Its Centennial
Here are some thoughts on the 1921 Tulsa race riot.The 1921 race riot in Tulsa began on Monday, May 30, Memorial Day, when a young black man stepped into an elevator, tripped, and either grabbed a young white girl’s arm to steady himself, or stepped on her foot. She...
Words to the Graduates
In recent days, an editor at the New York Times asked readers to send in their wise words that they try to live by. The best responses appeared in two Sunday editions in April. A few examples follow. A Missouri resident named Dave Dillon said, “Always behave as if...
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare passed away on April 23, 1616, at the age of 53, leaving behind some 39 plays that he wrote alone or assisted in writing, for his acting company, the Kings' Men. Two others in that company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published in 1623, 36 of...
One of University of Northern Colorado’s 2020 Honored Alumni
William H. Benson
Local has provided scholarships for history students for 15 years
A Sterling resident is among five alumni selected to be recognized this year by the University of Northern Colorado. Bill Benson is one of college’s 2020 Honored Alumni.
Each year UNC honors alumni in recognition for their outstanding contributions to the college, their profession and their community. This year’s honorees were to be recognized at an awards ceremony on March 27, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak that event has been cancelled. Instead UNC will recognize the honorees in the fall during homecoming Oct. 10 and 11……
Newspaper Columns
The Duodecimal System
For centuries, the ancient Romans calculated sums with their clunky numerals: I, V, X, L, C, D, and M; or one, five, ten, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. They knew nothing better.
The Thirteenth Amendment
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by it, he declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” Lincoln’s Proclamation freed some 3.1 million slaves within the Confederacy.
The Fourteenth Amendment
After Congress and enough states ratified the thirteenth amendment that terminated slavery, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law declared that “all people born in the United States are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” The Act equated birth to citizenship.
The New-York Packet and the Constitution
Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian, published her newest book a month ago, These Truths: A History of the United States. In a short introduction, she describes in detail the Oct. 30, 1787 edition of a semi-weekly newspaper, The New-York Packet.
Mr. Benson’s writings on the U.S. Constitution are a great addition to the South Platte Sentinel. Its inspiring to see the history of the highest laws of this country passed on to others.
– Richard Hogan
Mr. Benson, I cannot thank you enough for this scholarship. As a first-generation college student, the prospect of finding a way to afford college is a very daunting one. Thanks to your generous donation, my dream of attending UNC and continuing my success here is far more achievable
– Cedric Sage Nixon
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– Extra Times
FUTURE BOOKS
- Thomas Paine vs. George Whitefield
- Ralph Waldo Emerson vs. Joseph Smith
- William James vs. Mary Baker Eddy
- Mark Twain vs. Billy Graham
- Henry Louis Mencken vs. Jim Bakker
