Plum Creek Railroad Attack Site
The monument, found near present day Lexington, Nebraska, marks an event that occurred on August 7th 1867 at a place then known as Plum Creek. That night, a band of Cheyenne Indians staged a devastating attack on the fledgling Union Pacific Railroad and some of its workers.
The building of this line was the beginning of the end of the well-being of the Plains Indians: this monument marks a night when they lashed out at what they must have felt was beyond merely an affront to their way of life—but an existential threat.
It is this aspect of the first transcontinental railroad that, in tension with it being one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century, causes me to feel very much conflicted and ambivalent about it, as well as its place in history.
Image by Richard Koenig; taken August 20th 2017.