to the chieftainship of the small band of bad Indians he had gathered about him. In the very first year of his chieftainship his cousin, The War Eagle That May Be Seen, chief of the Wakpekutas, was hunting in what is now Murray County, Minnesota, when Inkpaduta stole into his camp in the night time and killed the young chief and seventeen of his people. As the white settlements began to extend into western Iowa and western Minnesota Inkpaduta spent much of his time raiding the settlements, stealing stock, and annoying the settlers.
By the spring of 1857 a considerable settlement had grown up about Spirit Lake on the northern border of Iowa. In March of that year Inkpaduta visited this settlement with his entire band, consisting of eleven lodges. He fell upon the settlement and utterly destroyed it, killing forty-two persons in all. Four women—Mrs. Thatcher, Mrs. Marble, Mrs. Noble, and a young girl named Abbie Gardner—were carried into captivity. The suffering and abuse to which these victims were subjected can not be described. During the march into Dakota the very heavy snows were melting and the country was flooded. At Flandreau the party crossed the Big Sioux River upon a fallen tree. Mrs. Thatcher was pushed from this log into the river and tortured to death while in the icy flood. Time and again she was permitted to reach the shore, and while climbing the slippery bank was clubbed back into the water, until she was finally exhausted. The party then went into camp at Lake Herman, near Madison.
Two Christian Indians from the settlement at Lac qui Parle, Greyfoot and Sounding Heavens, who were hunt-
