Rice County, Minnesota - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 21 of those read), 1882

And Children

We come now to the massacre itself, the terrible blow which fell, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, with such ai^palling force and suddenness, upon the unarmed and defenceless border, crimsoning its fair fields with the blood of its murdered people, and lighting up the midnight sky with the hirid blaze of burning dwellings, by the light of which the affrighted survivors tied from the nameless terrors that beset their path, before the advancing gleam of the uplifted tomahawk, many of them only to fall victims to the Indian bullet, while vainly seeking a place of security.

The first blow fell upon the town of Acton, thirty-five miles north-east of the Lower Sioux agency, in the county of Meeker. On Sunday, August 17, 18G2, at 1 o'clock P. M., sis Sioux Indians, said to be of Shakopee's band of Lower Annuity Sioux, came to the house of Jones and demanded food. It was refused them, as Mrs. Jones was away from home, at the house of Mr. Howard Baker, a son-in-law, three fourths of a mile distant. They became angry and boisterous, and fearing violence at their bands, Mr. Jones took his children, a boy and a girl, and went himself to Baker's, leaving at the house a girl from fourteen to sixteen years of age, and a boy of twelve - brother and sister - who lived with him. The Indians soon followed on to Baker's. At Howard Baker's were a Mr. Webster and his wife. Baker and wife and infant child, and Jones and his wife and two children.

Soon aft«r reaching the house, the Indians proposed to the three men to join them in targetshooting. They consented, and all discharged their guns at the target. Mr. Baker then traded guns with an Indian, the savage giving him $3 as the difference in the value of the guns. Then all commenced loading again. The Indians got the charges into their guns first, and immediately turned and shot Jones. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Baker were standing in the door. When one of the savages leveled his gun at Mrs. Baker, her husband saw the movement, and sprang between them, receiving the bullet intended for his wife in his own body. At the same time they shot Webster and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Baker, who had her infant in her arms, seeing her husband fall, fainted, and fell backward into the cellar (a trapdoor being open), and thus escaped. Mrs. Webster was lying in their wagon, from which the goods were not yet unloaded, and escaped unhurt. The children of Mr. Jones were in the house, and were not molested. They then returned to the house of Mr. Jones, and killed and scalped the girl. The boy was lying on the bed and was undiscovered, but was a silent witness of the tragic fate of his sister.

After killing the girl the savages left without disturbing anything, and going directly to the house of a settler, took from his stable a span of horses already iu the harness, and while the family was at dinner, hitched them to a wagon standing near, and without molesting any one, drove off in the direction of Beaver Creek settlement and the Lower Agency, leaving Acton at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. This span of horses, harness and wagon were the only property taken from the neighborhood by them.

The boy at Jones's who escaped massacre at their hands, and who was at the house during the entire time that they were there, avers that they obtained no liquor there that day, but even that when they came back and murdered his sister, the bottles upon the shelf were untouched by them. They had obtained none on their first visit before going over to Baker's. It would seem, therefore, that the very general belief that these first murders at Acton, on the 17th, were the result of drunkenness, is a mistake.

Mrs. Baker, who was unhurt by the fall, remained in the cellar until after the Indians were gone, when, taking the children, she started for a neighboring settlement, to give the alarm. Before she left, an Irishman, calling himself Cox, came to the house, whom she asked to go with her, and carry her child. Cox laughed, saying, "the men were not dead, but drunk, and that, falling down, they had hurt their noses and made them bleed," and refusing to go with Mrs. Baker, went off in the direction taken by the Indians. This man Cox had frequently been seen at the Lower Agency, and was generally supposed fo be an insane man, wandering friendless over the country. It has been supjjosed by many that he was in league with the Indians. We have only to say, if he was, he counterfeited insanity remarkably well.

Mrs. Baker reached the settlement in safety, and on the next day (Monday) a company of citizens of Forest City, the county seat of Meeker county, went out to Acton to bury the dead. Forest City is twelve miles north of that place. The party who went out on Monday saw Indians on horseback, and chased them, but faDed to get near enough to get a shot, and they escaped.

As related in a preceding chapter, a council was held at Rice Creek on Sunday, at which it was decided that the fearful tragedy should commence on the next morning. It is doubtful whether the Aoton murders were tlien known to these conspirators, as this council assembled in the afternoon, and the savages who committed those murders had some forty miles to travel, after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, to reach the place of tliis council. It would seem, therefore, that those murders could have had no influence in precipitating this council, as they could not, at that time, have been kuown to Little Crow and his conspirators.

The final decision of these fiends must have been made as early as sundown; for by early dawn almost the entire force of warriors, of the Lower tribes, were ready for the work of slaughter. They were already armed and pamted, and dispersed through the scattered settlements, over a region at least forty miles in extent, and were rajjldly gathering in the vicinity of the Lower Agency, until some 250 were collected at that point, and surrounded the houses and stores of the traders, while yet the inmates were at their morning meal, or asleep in their beds in fancied security, all unconscious of the dreadful fate that awaited them. The action was concerted, and the time fixed. The blow was unexpected, and unparalleled! In the language af Adjutent-General Malmros:

"Since the formation of our general Government, no State or Territory of the EepubUc has received so severe a blow at the hands of the savages, or witnessed within its borders a parallel scene of murder, butchery, and rapine."

Philander Prescott, the aged Government Interpreter at that Agency, who had resided among the Sioux for forty-five years, having a wife and children allied to them by ties of blood, and who knew their language and spoke it better than any man of their own race, aud who seemed to understand every Indian impulse, had not the sUghtest intimation or conception of such a catastrophe as was about to fall upon the country. The Rev. S. R. Riggs, in a letter to a St. Paul paper, imder date of August 13, writes that "all is qaiet and orderly at the place of the forthcoming payment." This gentleman had been a missionary among these people for over a (juarter of a century. His intimate acquaintance with their character and language were of such a nature as to enable him to know and detect the first symptoms of any intention of committing any dejjredations upon the whites, and had not the greatest secrecy been observed by them, the knowledge of their designs would undoubtedly have been communicated to either Mr. Proscott, Mr. Riggs, or Dr. Williamson, who had also been among them almost thirty years. Such was the position of these gentlemen that, had they discovered or suspected any lurking signs of a conspiracy, such as after developments satisfy us actually existed, and had failed to communicate it to the authorities and the people, they would have laid themselves open to the horrible charge of complicity with the murderers. But whatever may be the jsubhc judgement upon the course afterward pursued by the two last-named gentlemen, in their efforts to shield the guilty wretches from that punishment their awful crimes so justly merited, no one who knows them would for a moment harbor a belief that they had any suspicion of the coming storm until it burst upon them.

A still stronger proof of the feeling of security of these uiDon the reservation, and the belief that the recent demonstrations were only such as werii of yearly occurrence, and that all danger wa& passed, is to be found in the fact that, as late au, the 15th of August, the substance of a dispatcl/. was published in the daily papers of St. Pauly from Majoi' Galbraith, agreeing fully with thu views of Mr. Riggs, as to the quiet and orderly conduct of the Indians. This opinion is accompanied by the very highest evidence of humau sincerity. Under the belief of their peaceabla^ disposition, he had, on the 16th day of August, sent his wife and children from Fort Ridgely ti Yellow Medicine, where they arrived on Sunday, the 17th, the very day of the murda/o at Acton,, and on the very day, also, that the tAuncil at Rico Creek had decided that the white tbce in Minne^- sota must either perish or be drivfcii back east oj" the Mississippi. But early on tijs fatal Mondaj morning Mr. Prescott and Re-/. J. D. Hiamaw learned from Little Crow that the storm of s^vagti wrath was gathering, and about to break upo^ their devoted heads, and that Iheir only safety was in instant flight.

The first crack of the India* guns that fell n/, his ear, a moment afterward, found Prescott auii Hinman, and his household iJeetng for their lives,

Mrs. Hinman was, fortunately, then at Faribault. All the other members of the family escaped with Mr. Hinman (o Fort Ridgely. The slaughter at the Agency now commenced. John Lamb, a teamster, was shot down, near the house of Mr. Hinman, just as that gentleman and liis family were starting on their perilous journey of escape. At the same time some Indians entered the stable, and were taking therefrom the horses belonging to the Government. Mr. A. H. Wagner, Superintendent of Farms at that Agency, entered the stable to prevent them, and was, by order of Little Crow, instantly shot down. Mr. Hinman waited to see and hear no more, but fled toward the ferry, anU soon put the Minnesota river between himself and the terril>le tragedy enacting behind him.

At about the same time, Mr. J. C. Dicliinson, who kept the Government boarding-house, with all his family, including several girls who were working for him, also succeeded in crossing the river with a span of horses and a wagon; these, with some others, mostly women and children, who had reached the ferry, escaped to the fort.

Very soon after. Dr. Philander P. Humphrey, physician to the Lower Sioux, with his sick wife, and three children, also siicceeded in crossing the river, but never reached the fort. All but one, the eldest, a boy of about twelve years of age, were killed upon the road. They had gone about four miles, when Mrs. Humphrey became so much exhaiisted as to be unable to proceed further, and they went into tlje house of a Mr. Magner, deserted by its inmates. Mrs. Humphrey was placed on the bed; the son was sent to the spring for water for his mother. * * The boy heard the wild war-whovip of the savage break upon the stillness of the air, and, in the nest moment, the ominous crack of their guns, which told the fate of his family, and left him its sole survivor. Fleeing hastily toward Port Eidgely, about eight miles distant, he met the command of Captain Marsh on their way toward the Agency. The young hero turned back with them to the ferry. As they passed Magner's house, they saw the Doctor lying near the door, dead, but the hou5e itself was a heap of smouldering ruins; and this brave boy was thus compelled to look Bpon the funeral pyre of his mother, and his little brother and sister. A burial party afterward found their charred remains amid the blackened ruins, and gave them Christian sepulture. In the charred hands of the little girl was found her china doU, with which she refused to part even in death. The boy went on to the ferry, and in that disastrous coullict escaped unharmed, and finally made liis way into the fort

In the mean time the work of death went on. The whites, taken by surprise, were utterly defenseless, and so great had been the feeling of security, that many of them were actually unarmed, although living in the very midst of the savages. At the store of Nathan Myrick, Hon. James W. Lynd, formerly a member of the State Senate, Andrew J. Myrick, and G. W. Divoll were among the first victims. * * * In the store of William H. Forbes were some five or six persons, among them Mr. George H. Spencer, jr. Hearing the yelling of the savages outside, these men ran to the door to ascertain its cause, when they were instantly fired upon, killing four of their number, and severely wounding Mr. Spencer. Spencer and his uninjured companion hastUy sought a temporary place of safety in the chamber of the building.

" When I reached the foot of the stairs, I turned and beheld the store filling with Indians. One had followed me nearly to the stairs, when he took deliberate aim at my body, but, providentially, both barrels of his gun missed fire, and I succeeded in getting above without further injury. Not expecting to live a great while, I threw myself upon a bed, and, while lying there, could hear them opening cases of goods, and carrying them out, and threatening to burn the building. I did not relish the idea of being burned to death very well, so I arose very quietly, and taking a bed-cord, I made fast one end to the bed-post, and carried the other to a window, which I raised. I intended, in case they fired the building, to let myself down from the window, and take the chances of being shot again, rather than to remain where I was and bum. The man who went up-stairs with me, seeing f good opportunity to escape, rushed down through the crowd and ran for life; he was fired upon, and two charges of buckshot struck him, but he succeeded in making his escape. I had been up-stairs probably an hour, when I heard the voice of an Inilian inquiring for me. I recognized his voice, and feli that I was safe. Upon being told that I was up-stairs, he rushed up, followed by ten or a dozen others, and approaching my bed, asked if I was mortally wounded. I told him that I did not know, but that I was badly hurt. Some of the others came up and took me by the hand, and appeared to be sorry that I had been hurt. Ti'ev then asked me where the guns were. I

" The name of this Indian is Wakinyatawa, or, in English, 'His Thunder.' He was, up to the time of the outbreak, the head soldier of Little Crow, and, some foiu or five years ago, went to Washington with that chief to see their Great Father. He is a fine-looking Indian, and has always been noted for his bravery in fighting the Chippewas. When we reached the foot of the stairs, some of the Indians cried out, 'Kill him!' 'Spare no Americans I' 'Show mercy to none!' My friend, who was unarmed, seized a hatchet that was lying near by, and declared that he would out down the first one that should attempt to do me any further harm. Said he, ' If you had killed him before I saw him, it would have been all right; bu', we have been friends and comrades for ten years, and now that I have seen him, I will protect him or die with him.' They then made way for us, and we passed out; he procured a wagon, and gave me over to a couple of squaws to take me to his lodge. On the way we were stopped two or three times by armed Indians on horseback, who inquired of the squaws 'What that meant?' Upon being answered that ' This is Wakinyatawa's friend, and he has saved his life,' they sutfered us to pass on. His lodge was about four miles above the Agency, at Little Crow's village. My friend soon came home and washed me, and dressed my wounds with roots. Some few white men succeeded in making their escape to the fort. There were no other white men taken prisoners."

The relation of "comrade," which existed between Mr. Spencer and this Indian, is a species of Freemasonry which is in existence among the Sioux, and is probably also common to other Indian tribes.

The store of Louis Robert was, in like manner, attacked. Patrick McClellan, one of the clerks in charge of the store, was killed. There were at the store several other persons; some of them were kLUed and some made their escape. Mr. John Nairn, the Government carpenter at the Lower Sioux Agency, seeing the attack upon the stores and other places, seized his children, four in number, and, with his wife, started out on the prairie, making their way toward the fort. They were accompanied by Mr. Alexander Hunter, an attached personal friend, and his young wife. Mr. Nairn had been among them in the employ of the Government, some eight years, and had, by his urbane manners and strict attention to their interests, secured the personal friendship of many of the tribe. Mr. Nairn and his family reached the fort in safety that afternoon. Mr. Hunter had, some years before, frozen his feet so badly as to lose the toes, and, being lame, walked with great difficulty. When near an Indian village below the Agency, they were met by an Indian, who urged Hunter to go to the village, promising to get them a horse and wagon with which to make their escape. Mr. Hunter and his wife went to the Indian village, believing their Indian friend would redeem his promises, but from inability, or some other reason, he did not do so. They went to the woods, where they remained all night, and in the morning started for Fort Ridgely on foot. They had gone but a short distance, however, when they met an Indian, who, without a word of warning, shot poor Hunter dead, and led his distracted young wife away into captivity.

We now return once more to the scene of blood and conflagration at the Agency. The whitehaired interpreter, Philander Prescott (now verging upon seventy years of age), hastily left his house soon after his meeting with Little Crow, and tied toward Fort Ridgely. The other members of his family remaiaed behind, knowing that their relation to the tribe would save them. Mr. Prescott had gone several miles, when he was overtaken. His murderers came and talked with him. He reasoned with them, saying: "I am an old man: I have lived with you now forty-five years, almost half a century. My wife and children are among you, of your own blood; I have never done you any harm, and have been your true friend in all your troubles; why should you wish to kill me?" Their only reply was: "We would save your life if we could, but the white man must die; we cannot spare your life; our orders are to kill all white men; we cannot spare you."

Seeing that all remonstrance was vain and hopeless, and that his time had come, the aged man with a firm step and noble bearing, sadly turned away from the deaf ear and iron heart of the savage, and with dignity and composure received the fatal messenger.

Thus perished Philander Prescott, the true, tried, and faithful friend of the Indian, by the hands of that perfidious race, whom he had so Ion J and so faithfully labored to benefit to so little purpose.

known to have reached other places of safety. All siifTered incredible hardships; many hidiDg by day in the tall prairie grass, in bogs and sloughs, or under the trunks of prostrate trees, crawling stealthily by night to avoid the lurking and wily foe, who, with the keen scent of the blood-hound and ferocity of the tiger, followed on their trail, thirsting for blood.

Among those who escaped into the fort were Mr. J. 0. Whipple, of Farib.ault; Mr. Charles B. Hewitt, of New Jersey. The services of Mr. Whipple were recognized and rewarded by the Government with a first lieutenant's commission in the volunteer artiUory service.

James Powell, a young man residing at St. Peter, was at the Agency herding cattle. He bad just turned the cattle out of the yard, saddled and mounted his mule, as the work of death commenced. Seeing Lamb and Wagner shot down near him he turned to flee, when Lamb called to him for help; but, at that moment two shots were fired at him, and, putting spurs to his mule he turned toward the ferry, passing close to an Indian who leveled his gun to fire at him; but the caps exploded, when the savage, evidently surprised that he had failed to kill him, waved his hand toward the river, and exclaimed, "Puckachee! Puckachee!" Pcwell did not wait for a second warning, which might come in a more unwelcome form, but slipped at once from the back of his animal, dashed down the bluff through the brush, and reached the ferry just as the boat was leaving the shore. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, he saw an Indian in full pursuit on the very mule he had a moment before abandoned.

All that day the work of sack and plunder went on; and when the stores and dwellings and the warehouses of the Government had been emptied of their contents, the torch was applied to the var^ ious buildings, and the little village was soon a heap of smouldering ruins.

The bodies of their slain victims were left to fester in the sun where they fell, or were consumed in the bmldings from which they had been unable to effect their escape.

So complete was the surprise, and so sudden and unexpected the terril^le blow, that not a single one of all that host of naked savages was slain. In thirty minutes from the time the first gun was fired, not a white person was left alive. All were either weltering in their gore or had fled in fear and terror from that place of death.

Eedwood River

At the Kedwood river, ten miles above the Agency, on the road to Yellow Medicine, resided Mr. Joseph B. Reynolds, in the employment of tha Government as a teacher. His house was within one mile of Shakopee's vUlage. His family consisted of his wife, a niece - Miss Mattie Wil- Uams, of Painesville, Ohio - Mary Anderson and Mary Schwandt, hired girls. William Landmeicr, a hired man, and Legrand Davis, a young man from Shakopee, was also stopping with them temporarily.

On the morning of the 18th of August, at about 6 o'clock, John Moore, a half-breed trader, residing near them, came to the house and informed them that there was an outbreak among the Indians, and that they had better leave at once. Mr. Reynolds immediately got out liis buggy, and, taking his wife, started off across the prairie in such a direction as to avoid the Agency. At the same time Davis and the three girls got into the wagon of a Mr. Patoile, a trader at Yellow Medicine, who had just arrived there on his way to New Ulm, and they also started out on the prairie. WiUiam, the hired man, would not leave until he had been twice warned by Moore that his life was in danger. He then went down to the river bottom, and following the Minnesota river, started for the fort. When some distance on his way he came upon some Indians who were gathering up cattle. They saw him and there was no way of escape. They came to him and told him that if he would»assist them in driving the cattle they would not kill him. Making a merit of necessity he complied, and went on with them till they were near the Lower Agency, when the Indians, hearing the firing at the ferry, suddenly left him and hastened on to take part in the battle then progressing between Captain Marsh and their friends. WiUiam fled in an opjjosite direction, and that night entered Fort Ridgely.

We return now to Patoile and his party. After crossing the Redwood near its mouth, he drove some distance up that stream, and, turnin" to the left, struck across the prairie toward New Ulm, keeping behind a sweU in the prairie which ran parallel with the Minnesota, some three miles south of that stream.

They had, unpursued, and apparently unobserved, reached a point within about ten mdes of New Ulm, and nearly opposite Fort Ridgely, when they were suddenly assailed by Indians, who killed Patoile and Davis, and severely wounded Mary Anderson. Miss WiUiams and Mary Schwandt were captured unhurt, and were taken back to Waucouta's village.

The jjoor, injured young woman survived her wounds and the brutal and fiendish violation of her person to which she was subjected by these devils incarnate, but a few days, when death, in mercy, came to her relief and ended her sufferings in the quiet of the grave!

Mattie Williams and Mary Schwandt were afterwards restored to their friends by General Sibley's expedition, at Camp Release. We say, resstored to their friends; this was hardly true of Mary Schwandt, who, when release came, found ahve, of all her father's family, only one, a little brother; and he had witnessed the fiendish slaughter of aU the rest, accompanied by circumstances of infernal barbarity, without a parallel in the history of savage brutality.

On Sund.iy, the 17th, George Gleason, Government store-keeper at the Lower Agency, accompanied by the family of Agent Galbraith, to Yellow Medicine, and on Monday afternoon, ignorant of the terrible tragedy enacted below, started to return. He had with him the wife and two children of Dr. J. S. Wakefield, physician to the Upper Sioux. When about two miles above the mouth of the Redwood, they met two armed Indians on the road. Gleason greeted them with the usual salutation of "Ho!" accompanied with the inquiry, in Sioux, as he passed, "Where are you going?" They returned the salutation, but GlQpsou had gone but a very short distance, when the sharjj crack of a gun behind him bore to his ear the first intimation of the death in store for him. The buUet passed through his body and he fell to the ground. At the same moment Ghaska, the Indian who had not fired, sprang into the wagon, by the side of Mrs. Wakefield, and driving a short distance, returned. Poor Gleason was lying upon the groimd, still alive, writhing in mortal agony, when the savage monster completed his heUish work, by placing his gun at his breast, and shooting him again. Such was the sad end of the life of George Gleason ; gay, jocund, genial and generous, he was the life of every circle. His pleasant face was seen, and his mellow voice was heard in song, at almost every social gathering on that rude frontier. He bad a smile and pleasant word for all; and yet he fell, in his manly strength, by the hands of these bloody monsters, whom he had never wronged in word or deed. Some weeks afterward, his mutil.ited remains were found by the troops under Colonel Sibley, and buried where he fell. They were subsequently removed by his friends to Shakopee, where they received the rites of Christian sepulture.