This Date in History: April 12

Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, head of the SA, born February 19, 1888 in Düsseldorf, Gauleiter of Westphalia, Gauleiter of the Ruhr, left the Nazi Party in 1941, died in Munich on April 12, 1968, described Nazi Party leaders in 1929: “Look, every one of the Gauleiter is a little Hitler.  Some really are; some just think they are.”  (2000 Quotations from Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich)

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On Sunday, April 12, 1874 at 8:00 a.m., hundreds of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors under Chief Sitting Bull attacked the laager of the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition along what would later be called Reno Creek in the Montana Territory not far from where the Seventh Cavalry would march two years later to their disaster at the Little Bighorn.  The expedition, under the command of Frank Grounds, a veteran of the Civil War, which included Eli Way, Muggins Taylor, Oliver Hanna, Doc Wickersham, Jack Bean and Archie Campbell, held their ground and repelled the attackers by 11:00 a.m.  The engagement has since acquired the name Battle of Great Medicine Dance Creek.  (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gold and Guns: the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition)