“They had surrounded the ox-sled in an attitude of defense, as they had supposed us to be Indians, and had resolved, if overpowered, never to fall into the hands of the savages alive. On discovering that we were friends, such a heartrending scene I never before witnessed, as the relatives and friends of the refugees had supposed they were dead. In the party were Mrs. W. L. Church and her children; her sister, Drusella Swanger, shot through the shoulder; Mr. Thomas, who had lost an arm; Mr. Carver, also severely wounded in the fight at Springfield; Mrs. Dr. Strong and child, who had been deserted by her craven husband. In the haste of their flight they had taken but few provisions and scanty clothing. The women had worn out their shoes; their dresses were worn into fringe about the ankles; the children were crying with hunger and cold; the wounded were in a deplorable condition for want of surgical aid. Their food was entirely exhausted; they had no means of making fire; their blankets and clothing were wet and frozen; and in their exhausted condition it is hardly possible that many of them could have survived another night’s exposure from the fearful storm then coming on. The refugees were so overcome by the sudden transition from deadly peril and impending death that seemed to confront them, changed in an instant to relief in their desperate extremity, that they sank down in the snow, crying and laughing alternately, as their deliverers gathered around them. If nothing more had been accomplished by the Relief Expedition, every member felt that the salvation of eighteen perishing refugees, from almost certain death by exposure and starvation, had richly repaid them for all the hardships encountered.”
On the 31st the expedition pushed northward, finding frequent indications of Indians, until it reached the Granger house, on the west fork of the Des Moines River, near the Minnesota line. Here Major Williams learned that a company of soldiers from Fort Ridgely was at Springfield for the protection of settlers, and that the Indians had moved on westward. Learning that those murdered at the lakes were unburied, Major Williams called for volunteers to go to the lakes and bury the mutilated bodies. Captain J. C. Johnson, Lieutenant J. N. Maxwell, and Privates W. E. Burkholder, Henry Carse, W. N. Ford, J. H. Dailey, O. C. Howe, Geo. P. Smith, O. C. Spencer, S. Van Cleve, C. Stebbins, R. U. Wheelock, R. A. Smith, B. F. Parmenter, Jesse Addington, R. McCormack, J. M. Thatcher, W. R. Wilson, James Murray, A. E. Burtch, W. K. Laughlin, E. D. Kellogg and John Dailey promptly
