Alan Wills, of Windermere, revels a link between Indian Chief Red Cloud and three brothers from Crook in Westmorland.

The defeat of Red Cloud and the Oglala Sioux led to very different fates for three brothers from Westmorland.

Despite major victories over the Americans, the great chief came to realise that further resistance would lead to the extermination of his people, so he obeyed in 1877 when he was told to forsake North West Nebraska for the confinement of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, thereby, enabling settlers to swarm onto the vacant land.

Samuel, William and James Swinbank had left Beckside, Crook, for Illinois in 1875 with their farming parents, John and Frances, and all but one of their siblings.

In 1883, aged 23, Samuel decided to try his luck further west, starting a farm near Whitney, Nebraska.

He was penniless after several years, due to managing to grow only one crop but borrowed money, moved to Sugar Loaf in Sioux County and began livestock farming, living in a dugout for two years.

He succeeded as a rancher (mostly of horses), married a Danish immigrant, moved to near Crawford in Dawes County in 1902 and ended up with 640 acres plus land which he retained in Sioux County.

One of the couple's children, John Chester 'Chet' Swinbank (1899-1989), was for many years an agronomist a the University of Nebraska.

When James followed Samuel to North West Nebraska he was doing well as a rancher near Ardmore on the border with South Dakota, despite not having a wife, but he did suffer from rheumatism.

In 1898 at the age of 30 he left a note in the stable stating that he believed that his pain was incurable. Then he went into his house, set it on fire and shot himself, leaving his charred remains for others to find.

William, born in 1865, lived with Samuel in Sioux County in his late twenties, working as a rancher and as a schoolteacher, but returned to Illinois after three years to take care of his Uncle William Swinbank, whose parents had been farming at Low Hundhow, Staveley, when he left this country.

The younger William next set himself up as a grower of flowers, specialising in carnations and roses, married, prospered and supplied all the flowers for the dining cars on the Chicago and Great Western Railroad.

In 1923 he became superintendent of the grounds of the State Teachers' College in De Kalb County for 1,800 dollars a year.