The Republican Valley was the center of one of the major buffalo ranges of the Great Plains and a favorite hunting ground of several Indian tribes, including the Pawnee, Sioux, Oto, and Cheyenne, who spent much time here as late as 1874. These tribal hunts created problems because they brought together tribes traditionally at war. The major encounter in the region was the Battle of Massacre Canyon on August 5, 1873, twenty-five miles west of here near present Trenton, where a thousand Sioux warriors surprised and defeated a Pawnee hunting party of 350 men, women and children, killing 69 of them. The Pawnee retreated to this vicinity and mourned their dead throughout the night. One survivor was a severely wounded Pawnee woman whose child had been killed in the battle. A homesteader found her a few miles upstream and brought her to Indianola, a frontier settlement established in 1872. Settlers cared for her until she died a few days later, then buried her in a crude coffin on the banks of Coon Creek. Her body was reburied here in 1975 by the community during the American Revolution Bicentennial Year, with representatives of the Pawnee Indian Tribe taking part in the ceremony.