On June 16, 1720, Lieutenant-General Pedro de Villasur rode out of Spanish-controlled Santa Fe at the head of a small army. Best estimates suggest his force consisted of about 45 elite Spanish “soldados de cueras” (leather-clad soldiers), a Jesuit priest and a trader with six pack animals. They were joined by 60 Pueblo “auxiliaries” – renowned as effective skirmishers – and led by José Naranjo, a seasoned scout, explorer, interpreter and guide of mixed African and Hopi descent. Along the way, Villasur added a dozen Apache scouts to the expedition; still smarting from a blistering defeat at the hands of the Pawnee the previous year, the Apache were eager for payback. 

New Mexican Governor Antonio Valverde y Casio had ordered Villasur, a competent administrator but a military novice, to lead an expedition northeast into what is now Nebraska. Covering roughly 700 miles in seven weeks, his journey marked Spain’s farthest thrust into the Great Plains for years. His mission was to locate and capture French traders – and to question them about France’s plans for the region. 

 

A Growing Conflict

At this time, control of the New World’s western territories and resources was fiercely contested by the two world powers. The Spanish, who arrived first, quickly built a vast colonial empire stretching north from Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America to Vancouver Island and west from Florida to California. Meanwhile, the French, driven by the lure of the profitable fur trade, were the first to colonize the Upper Midwest – erecting forts, towns and trading posts from the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. 

As both nations expanded, conflict became inevitable. With European hostilities already in play, Spanish officials in the Southwest were deeply concerned about a potential French incursion into their territory. 

Compounding matters was the need to engage with the Native tribes already living in these lands. Both nations sought alliances through treaties that offered commercial and military advantages. Yet their approaches differed sharply. 

The French presence was relatively benign when compared to the Spanish. According to Pawnee Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Matt Reed in Pawnee, Oklahoma, “Our cultural landscape was huge; it ran all the way up the Missouri River and into the Dakotas. You could see Pawnee lodges all the way to what is now North Dakota. But the French weren’t after our land. They started showing up in the late 1600s, and they respected our sociopolitical systems, sometimes intermarrying within the Tribe. Both the French and the Pawnee benefited from the trading.” 

Reed noted that while the Pawnee had a longstanding ceramics tradition, “clay pots break; brass trade pots don’t.” Knives, scissors, thimbles, trade candles, decorative brass hawk bells and – most notably, firearms – became highly sought after items.  

Current understanding of the French presence is flawed, Reed said. Many people today mistakenly think that the French were solely focused on exploiting the fur trade or acting in self-interest. Instead, Reed argues that the French were initially trying to build settlements and secure food for their communities. Their early interactions with Native Americans were more about establishing mutual relationships and trade – exchanging goods like corn, beans, squash and meat – before those exchanges evolved into a more formal market economy. 

In contrast, Spanish relations with Native peoples were often marked by a superior and brutal approach. Those who rejected Spanish culture and religion were derisively labeled “indios bárbaros” – a term used for groups such as Pawnee and Otoe. “There were several times in our history when the Spanish ventured up into Pawnee country,” Reed said. “And every time, we either fought them or highly discouraged them from staying.” 

When Villasur left Santa Fe, he could hardly have foreseen what awaited him.

 

The Expedition

Villasur’s precise route remains unknown, though Nebraska Historian James A. Hanson notes that it “followed a hunting and raiding trail of the Pawnee …
surviving portions of Villasur’s journal state they were following an Indian trail.” 

Eventually, the expedition reached the Platte River near present-day Grand Island, and shortly afterward, the Loup River – both of which they crossed. By then, increasing numbers of French-allied Pawnee and Otoe warriors began appearing along their route.

Villasur attempted to negotiate through a Pawnee slave – whom the Spanish had renamed Francisco Sistaka – as his intermediary. However, as the number of Pawnee and Otoe warriors swelled, so did their resentment toward the Spanish. 

At some point, Sistaka disappeared. Although neither Spanish nor Pawnee accounts mention him again, it seems likely he rejoined his people, seizing the opportunity to strike back at his former masters.

Fear gripped Villasur’s party as they confronted both the mounting numbers and the palpable hostility of Indigenous warriors. They quickly retreated to the Loup River, recrossed it and established camp in a tall-grass meadow near present-day Columbus – a choice that, as Villasur would soon learn, provided ideal cover for an ambush.  

At dawn on Aug. 14, 1720, a large force of Pawnee and Otoe warriors, hidden by the tall grass, attacked the sleeping camp. Hanson postulates, “Probably Sistaka had informed his people of the best time to attack.” What followed became known as the Villasur Massacre. 

Villasur was killed almost immediately, while his cueras – armed with swords, lances and muskets – formed into a defensive circle. Outlying horse pickets attempted a desperate rescue; three soldiers charged into the melee on horseback. Two were killed, and only one managed to reach his comrades. In a final act of tenacity, seven soldiers mounted a ride to safety, while one man, shot nine times and scalped, somehow survived. 

The Pueblos, who had camped apart from the main force, avoided the full brunt of the attack but still lost nine of their 60 members. The Spanish debacle was even more severe: Within minutes, 35 Spaniards – including the priest and the celebrated scout José Naranjo – lay dead. Of the force of 45 elite cueras, only eight survived, while all the Apache scouts emerged unscathed. 

Hanson observed, “It is hard to imagine the demoralizing effect of this disaster upon New Mexico. The province had lost a general, its finest scout, a distinguished businessman, a priest and the flower of its frontiersmen.” 

In one day, the Spanish lost any hope of uncovering French intentions – and with it, the ambition for eastward expansion in North America. In the ensuing decades, intrepid French traders from Louisiana and Mackinac Island (in present-day Michigan), who had been trading with the Pawnee, traversed Nebraska to bring their trade goods to New Mexico – a movement that, as Hanson noted, “fueled Spanish hysteria.” 

Initially treated well, by 1750, authorities in Mexico City began punitive actions against French merchants. Goods were confiscated, and traders found themselves imprisoned or worse. One merchant from Mackinac Island, after two successful trips, was arrested on his third venture, sentenced to life in prison and shipped to Spain in chains as a galley slave.

 

Recording the Massacre

Aside from some recovered pages from Villasur’s journal, the only contemporary visual record of the Massacre is a large hide painting. A reproduction of the painting resides at the Nebraska State History Museum in Lincoln, while the original – commissioned by a stunned Spanish government, based upon the testimonies of the few survivors – is on display at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. 

Measuring 17 by 4 1/2 feet and composed of three hides (most likely buffalo), the painting depicts the battle in fine detail at the confluence of the Platte and Loup rivers. Native warriors are shown nude, their bodies painted in the traditional style they wore into battle. 

Some figures in the painting appear to wear cocked hats or pointed caps and carry long rifles – a detail that once sparked conjecture that Frenchmen participated in the fight. However, Reed is emphatic: “We are 99.9 percent certain that there were no Frenchmen at the massacre. It was just their rationale for losing to a bunch of Indians!”

After studying the hide painting, Otoe-Pawnee anthropologist Melea Hoffman, a researcher for the Otoe-Missouri Tribal Office, reflected, “One of the things I find most important about these pieces is that it brings back a lot of the forgotten history of our people. When we find art like this, we’re able to look back in history and see from a first-person perspective … what part we took.” 

Hoffman added, “Native Americans have been downplayed in history, at least in a positive light. We’ve either been pushed to the back or we have been made a sidenote. As far as this battle, the Otoe and the Pawnee were a huge part of history … and this victory, where they helped the French and defeated the Spanish and Villasur … changed the tide of American history.”

The hide painting is not the only surviving memory of the massacre. Although it remains uncertain whether any living descendants of the Pawnee warriors exist, a traditional Tribal song – passed down through generations – vividly recounts the battle and the subsequent Pawnee and Otoe victory.