Webmaster: griffing@fnal.gov

Indian raid at Oak Grove Ranch

The following article by Clarendon E. Adams describes the Indian raid of the Oak Grove Ranch owned by G. S. Comstock that occurred on August 7, 1864. It was to this ranch in present-day Nuckolls County, Nebraska that Rev. James S. Griffing and the other local militia of Nemaha County, Kansas traveled in pursuit of the renegade Indians following the raid. The two Ostrander boys are mentioned as being wounded and taken to Seneca in this account.

The settlement of the section now included in Nuckolls county was attended with more privation and suffering from Indian raids and depredations than any other county in the state of Nebraska. The great Indian raids of August 7, 1864, extended from Denver, Colorado, to Gage county, Nebraska, at which time every stage station and settlement along the entire line of the Overland trail was included in that skillfully planned attack. A certain number of warriors were assigned to each place and the attack was simultaneous along the line for four hundred miles in extent.

The Oak Grove ranch was among the most formidable in fortifications and a band of forty well-armed braves was sent to capture and destroy it. On the day of the attack G. S. Comstock, owner of Oak Grove ranch, was away from home; but besides his family there were five men at the stockade. The Indians came to the ranch about midday in a friendly attitude. They had left their ponies about a quarter of a mile away. They asked for something to eat and were permitted to come into the house with their guns and bows and arrows on their persons. They finished their dinner and each received a portion of tobacco and some matches. Then without any warning they turned upon the inmates of the ranch yelling and shooting like demons, and only for the quickness and great presence of mind of one of the Comstock boys the whites would all have been killed or taken away captives to submit to the cruelty of the savage foe.

A Mr. Kelly, from Beatrice, was there and was the first to fall pierced with an arrow. He had a navy revolver in his belt. The Indians rushed for it but young Comstock was too quick for them and seized the revolver first and shot down the leader of the braves. Seeing the fate of their leader, the Indians rushed to the door in great fright. The revolver was in skilfulhands and three more of the braves went down under the unerring aim of young Comstock. Kelly and Butler were both killed outright. Two men by the name of Ostrander and a boy were wounded. All the other occupants of the ranch had their clothes pierced with arrows or bullets.

The Indians ran to their ponies, and while they were away planning another attack, the wounded were cared for as best they could. The doors were securely barred and the living were stationed in the most advantageous places for defense. The friendly game of the Indians had not worked as they expected, but they were not daunted and soon they encircled the house, riding, shooting, and yelling. This fiendish warfare they kept up all the afternoon. They tried several times to set the buildings on fire but shots from experienced marksmen, both men and women, kept them at bay.

The new leader of the Indians rode a white pony and seemed at times to work his warriors up to great desperation, and young Comstock made up his mind to shoot him the next time that he appeared. It was now too dark to distinguish one man from another. Mr. Comstock, senior, was mounted on a white horse and he was enroute home about the time the Indians were expected to return. The vigilant son raised his gun, took aim, and was about to shoot, when one of the girls, remembering that her father rode a white horse, called out, "Father, is it you?" An affirmative answer came back just in time to prevent the fatal shot which would have followed in an istant [sic] more. Mr. Comstock had ridden through the Indian lines, while returning to his ranch, unmolested. He said to me he believed the Indians spared his life that evening on account of favors he had always granted them.

Five miles east of the Comstock ranch that day a boy eighteen years old by the name of Ulig was met by two Indians. One of them shook hands with him while the other pierced his body with a spear and then scalped him and left him writhing in the broiling sun to die on the prairie. This savage and brutal act was followed by others unparalleled even in savage warfare. Four miles above Oak Grove at a place called the Narrows on the Little Blue river, lived a family of ten persons by the name of Eubanks. They were from the East and knew nothing of Indians' cruel warfare and when they were attacked they left their cabin and ran for the trees and brush along the river banks. Nine of them were murdered in the most brutal manner: scalped and stripped of their clothing. Two of the women, Mrs. Eubanks with a young babe in her arms, and Laura Roper, a school teacher who was there on a visit, were the only ones who arrived at a place of concealment and would have escaped had not the babe from heat and fright cried out. The practiced ear of the Indians caught the sound and they were made captives and subjected to the most inhuman and beastly treatment by the horrible savages. After the mother was made a captive the baby cried from hunger. The mother was so famished she could not nourish the babe but held it fondly in her arms trying to soothe it; and one of the merciless savages stepped up and brained it with his tomahawk. No pen or brush can tell the horrors of this diabolical deed.

The two women were subjected to six months of bondage impossible to describe. I was telling this story one day to the late Captain Henry E. Palmer of Omaha, and learned from him that he and his command of soldiers and Pawnee scouts followed these inhuman wretches over the plains trying to bring them to bay, and finally down on the Solomon river in Kansas captured some of the Indian chiefs and succeeded in exchanging them for the two women captives.

This is one of the terrible chapters in the early settlement of Nuckolls county and was graphically detailed to me by Mr. Comstock soon after I settled in the county.

Another article, prepared and read by George D. Follmer at the annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society in January, 1912, described the Indian attach at Oak Grove Ranch as follows:

The massacre on the Little Blue occurred on Sunday afternoon August 7, 1864. The attack seemed general along the Little Blue extending east within a mile of Kiowa Ranch in Thayer county. At this point one of the Eubank boys was killed and scalped. Two of the Eubank boys were killed and scalped on n. 1/2 of n. w. 1/4 16- 3-5 and were buried under an elm tree on s. w. 1/4 of s. w. 1/4 8-3-5 on the banks of the Little Blue. It is stated that nine of these were killed. William Eubank and the others were killed on n. w. 1/4 7 & s. w. 1/4 6-3-5, all on August 7, 1864. The wife and child of one Eubank boy and Miss Laura Roper were carried off captives. Because the child was fretful it was killed soon after starting. In about six months these women were exchanged near Denver, Colorado, for Indian prisoners. Those killed at Oak Grove Ranch August 7, 1864, were W. R. Kelley and a man by the name of Butler. Those who escaped were E. S. Comstock sr.; Harry C. Comstock; J. M. Comstock, wife and child; Mrs. Francis Blush and child; Sarah Comstock; Mary Comstock; Ella Butler; Tobias Castor; George Hunt. A man by the name of Ostrander was wounded and died a short time afterward in Seneca, Kansas. George Hunt, at present county commissioner of Saline county, Nebraska, was wounded in the calf of the leg.

The bodies of Kelley and Butler were put into the small smokehouse on Monday, August 8, before the people left. The building, smokehouse and stable were burnt sometime Monday. The bodies in the smokehouse were nearly cremated when found on Thursday, August 11, by J. M. Comstock, James Douglas, John Gilbert and others, who had returned to bury them.

The Emery incident occurred August 9, 1864. He saved nine stagecoach passengers by discovering an Indian pony in a clump of willows as he was about to descend into the bottom land. He coolly turned his four horses and started on the race for life. He was fortunate enough to meet George Constable's ox train. Constable, seeing him coming, corralled the train and saved all in the coach. E. Umphrey, and G. G. and Hattie Randolph presented Emery a short time before his death with a fine gold ring. It was lost in 1885.

This incident was reported at the time to have taken place near the The Narrows; but it occurred on the southwest quarter of section 13, township 3, range 5, which is five to six miles east of The Narrows. George Constable was afterwards killed by the Indians on the divide between Elk Creek and the Little Blue and buried in the brakes of the Little Blue on the northeast quarter of section 35, township 4, range 6. A considerable number of wagons loaded with goods were burned on this quarter section. Pieces of crockery can now be found at this place.

Following are the names of ranches from Kiowa, Thayer county, Nebraska, to Kearney, Nebraska; also those that had charge August 7, 1864. The location is given of those in Nuckolls county. Kiowa Ranch, Thayer county, James Douglas; Oak Grove Ranch, E. S. Comstock; Eubank Ranch, Eubanks, on the n. e. 1/4, n. w. 1/4 s. 7, t. 3, r. 5; Ewing or Kelley Ranch, by W. R. Kelley, on the n. e. 1/4 of n. w. 1/4 s. 1, t. 3, r. 6; Little Blue station, by J. M. Comstock,on the s. e. 1/4 of n. e. 1/4 s. 35, t. 4, r. 6; Buffalo Ranch, by Milligan and Mudge, s.. e. 1/4, n. e. 1/4 s. 2, t. 4, r. 7; Liberty Farm, by Charles Emery; Pawnee Ranch, by Jas. Bainter; Spring Ranch, by Nute Metcalf; Lone Tree Ranch, party not known by writer; Elm Tree Ranch, by William Moody; Thirty-two Mile Creek by George George and Ansel Comstock; Hook or Junction Ranch, by Hook. At this point the road from Omaha formed a junction with the Oregon Trail nine miles east of Kearney. The incidents along the Oregon Trail were given by a party who lived on the trail from 1862 till after the massacre, and who was at Oak Grove ranch Sunday morning, August 7, 1864.

Marshall County [Kansas]... was several times the seat of panics arising from depredations committed by the Indians. Emigrants and ranchmen in the overland road were often driven in, as were also the new settlers, who had taken up claims west of Marshall County. At times apprehensions were felt that the Indians would extend their devastations to the older settlements, depleted as they were of able-bodied men, from enlistments in the army.

...The greatest panic was created in August, 1864, by a raid made by Indians on the Little Blue. On the 10th of August refugees from the scene of the massacre began to pour into Marysville. Teams with wagons filled with settlers, station-keepers and ranchmen, with their families, flowed into the town, each bringing stories of the outrageous murders and torture of men, women and children, and beseeching aid in recovering their captured friends. The militia companies were immediately mustered, and after making hasty preparations, left for the scene of trouble. One company under the command of Capt. Frank Schmidt and one in charge of Lieut. McCloskey were under march the day after the first intelligence arrived. They were also joined by a company from Vermillion, under Capt. James Kelley, and one from Irving, under Capt. T. S. Vaile. The Marshall County troops were under the command of Col. E. C. Manning. They were followed by a brigade expedition composed of portions of the Nemaha, Riley and Washington County regiments, under the command of Gen. Sherry of Seneca. Both expeditions, after traveling and seeing evidences of the Indian warfare, but meeting none, returned to their homes. Many of the refugees from the overland road and the counties west remained in Marshall County two or three weeks before returning to their homes.