Smith-Anderson Attack

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On February 5, 1862, Joseph P. Smith, his young sons William and Charles, and his grandchild Alexander Anderson were murdered while collecting logs along the north channel of the Platte River. While relations between Native Americans and white settlers in Nebraska were mostly peaceful, these murders increased tensions as more settlers arrived and the Civil War continued. The deaths went unsolved, although later a group of Pawnee claimed to have avenged the murders after an attack on a party of rival Lakota.