Never Caught Twice presents the untold history of horse raiding and
stealing on the Great Plains of western Nebraska. By
investigating horse stealing by and from four Plains
groups—American Indians, the U.S. Army, ranchers and cowboys, and
farmers—Matthew S. Luckett clarifies a widely misunderstood crime
in Western mythology and shows that horse stealing transformed
plains culture and settlement in fundamental and surprising ways.
From Lakota and Cheyenne horse raids to rustling gangs in the
Sandhills, horse theft was widespread and devastating across the
region. The horse's critical importance in both Native and white
societies meant that horse stealing destabilized communities and
jeopardized the peace throughout the plains, instigating massacres
and murders and causing people to act furiously in defense of their
most expensive, most important, and most beloved property. But as
it became increasingly clear that no one legal or military
institution could fully control it, would-be victims desperately
sought a solution that would spare their farms and families from
the calamitous loss of a horse. For some, that solution was
violence. Never Caught Twice shows how the story of horse stealing
across western Nebraska and the Great Plains was in many ways the
story of the old West itself.