OF IOWA | 327 |
can be traced back to Henry Lett’s fearful crime, the primary cause leading to the bloody retribution visited upon the innocent, as the attack was led by surviving relatives of Si-dom-i-na-do-tah. Forty-one innocent men, women and children were the direct victims, while the suffering of the captives, relatives and members of the Belief Expedition make up a record of horror and misery seldom surpassed.
It can never be known how many of the Indians were killed but the soldiers and friendly Indians, under Major Flandreau and Lieutenant Murray, killed Roaring Cloud, the murderer of Mrs. Noble and three other members of Ink-pa-du-tah’s band. It is probable that several were killed by Dr. Herriott, Snyder and Mattocks and two or three in the battle at the Thomas house. Ink-pa-du-tah’s party was among the most ferocious of the butchers in the Minnesota massacres of 1862 and it is not unlikely that some of them were among the Indians who were killed, or the thirty who were hung at Mankato. Ink-pa-du-tah was last heard of among the Sioux who fled to the far West pursued by General Sibley ’s army in 1863. On the 12th of April, 1857, Major Williams made a lengthy report to Governor Grimes of the Belief Expedition under his command from which the following extracts are made: