In September, 1856, a band of Proslavery men sacked Grasshopper Falls (Valley Falls) and terrorized the vicinity. On the 13th, the Free-State leader James H. Lane with a small company besieged a party of raiders in log buildings at Hickory Point, about one-half mile west, but unable to dislodge them, he sent to Lawrence for artillery and reinforcements. Col. James A. Harvey responded the next day only to find that Lane had raised the siege and departed. Sacramento, a historic Mexican War cannon, was fired into the buildings with little effect, and men pushing up a burning hayrack were shot in the legs. The skirmish ended in an armistice, celebrated, it is said, over a considerable quantity of whisky. Casualties were one Proslavery man killed and four wounded, and five Free-State men injured. At his family's farm home one-fourth mile west, artist John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) was born and spent his boyhood years. In 1940 he painted his famed murals in the Kansas statehouse at Topeka.