Rawhide Creek

The informant grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Here, he explains why a local creek from his home town was dubbed “Rawhide” Creek.

N: There’s a bunch of Native American–Native Indian– stories. Those aren’t technically my culture but– there’s a creek called Rawhide Creek. That supposedly has that name because a young man a long time ago, maybe the 1800s? I couldn’t tell ya. He set out to kill as many Indians as he could. And he killed a young girl. So her family, uh, to get revenge tracked him down. Found, like, the group he was a part of and said “You all die or you give him up” and they immediately gave him up. And so they took him to the creek, beat him to death, and skinned him. And there’s where you get the name Rawhide Creek.

Thoughts:
The informant also told a similar story as to why a local bridge was named “Heartbeat Bridge”. It seems that in this region, it’s important to remember tragedies, and in order to do that, the areas that tragedies happened in are named after them.