History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/1/26
WHILE the events recorded in the previous chapters were transpiring, four young women, who had been dragged from their homes by the merciless savages, were cowering in the Indian camp. Soon after their repulse at the Thomas cabin the Indians loaded their ponies, squaws and captives with plunder and started westward. Mrs. Thatcher was ill of a fever and scarcely able to walk, but the savages had no mercy. She was compelled to carry a heavy load and wade through snow and ice cold water, sometimes up to her waist. At night she was forced to cut and carry wood and assist in all the camp drudgery until she often sunk fainting in the snow. When she at last could go no longer, she was lashed to the back of a pony and carried along. She bore her sufferings with great patience in the knowledge that her husband, to whom she was devotedly attached, had escaped the massacre and would do all in his power for her rescue.
On the third day the Indians discovered that they were pursued by a company of soldiers. The warriors prepared for battle, while the squaws hastily tore down the tents and hid among the willows. One Indian was left with the captive women with orders to kill them when the attack began. An Indian sentinel in a tree watched the soldiers and signaled their movements to the warriors. After an hour and a half of intense excitement on the part of the Indians and captives it was known that the soldiers had turned back and abandoned the pursuit. The pursuing party was a detachment of twenty-four men, under Lieutenant Murray, which had been sent by Captain Barnard E. Bee,[1] from Springfield, in pursuit of the Indians. Captain Bee had arrived from Fort Ridgely and secured two half-breed guides for Lieutenant Murray. They reached the grove at 3 p.m. in which the Indians had camped the night before. Lieutenant Murray, upon examination of the camp, believed he was close upon the Indians, but the treacherous guides assured him the camp was three days old and that further pursuit was hopeless. Thus deceived, Murray turned back, when actually in sight of the sentinel of the Indians who was watching his movements. The Indians were in ambush in superior force and the result of an attack would have been doubtful, as they were well armed. It was better that no attempt was made since the four captives would have been massacred at once. The Indians were thoroughly alarmed and fled for two days and nights without stopping. The captives suffered greatly in this hurried retreat, wading through deep snow and swollen streams, cold, hungry and worn out, and it is a wonder they survived. Before they reached the Big Sioux River, the horses taken from the massacred settlers had died from starvation, their bodies were cut up for food and the loads they had carried were transferred to the backs of the squaws and the four white women.
Six weeks of terrible suffering and horrors unspeakable had been endured by the four young women when they reached the Big Sioux River. As they were preparing to cross an Indian came up to Mrs. Thatcher, who was carrying a heavy load, took the pack from her shoulders and ordered her to go onto the driftwood bridge. She realized at once that some harm was intended. She turned to her companions and bade them “good-by,” saying, “If any of you escape, tell my dear husband that I wanted to live for his sake.” The savage drove her along before him and when about half across seized Mrs. Thatcher and
KILLING OF MRS. THATCHER
(From an Old Painting.)
hurled her into the river. With wonderful strength and courage she swam in the icy current until she reached and clung to a fallen tree on the shore. Some of the savages beat her off with clubs and with their tent poles pushed her back into the swift current. Again the brave woman swam for the opposite shore, when the merciless wretches beat her back into the rapids. As she was carried along by the current, the savages ran along the shore throwing clubs and stones at the exhausted and drowning woman, until one of the warriors raised his rifle and shot her as she clung to a ledge of driftwood. The annals of Indian cruelty nowhere record a more cowardly crime. She was but nineteen years of age, a lovely girl in the bloom of youth, who had come with her husband to make a home on the beautiful wooded shore of Okoboji. Mrs. Noble and Mrs. Thatcher had been intimate friends in their girlhood days. They had married cousins and together had moved to the distant frontier with bright anticipations of long, happy lives in each other’s society. Now, as Mrs. Noble closed her eyes to shut out the horror of the dying struggles of her dearest friend, and thought of her murdered husband, child, father, mother, brothers and sister, she felt that death alone could relieve her hopeless anguish. That night she begged Abbie and Mrs. Marble to go with her and end their sufferings beneath the dark waters of the river, where her last dear friend had perished. From that day Mrs. Noble seemed weary of life and anxious to end the horrors that every night brought to the captives.
When news of the massacre of the settlers at the lakes and the capture of four women reached the Indian Agency on Yellow Medicine River, the agent, Charles E. Flandreau, with S. E. Biggs and Dr. Thos. Williamson, missionaries, began to devise plans for the rescue of the captives. Two friendly Indians had visited the Sioux camp, had there seen the three captive women and at once opened negotiations for their purchase. They finally succeeded in purchasing Mrs. Marble. On the morning of May 6th, she learned that she had been sold by Ink-pa-du-tah to two strange Indians. She bade her companions a sorrowful good-by. Mrs. Marble assured them that if she should reach a white settlement she would do all in her power for their rescue. Mrs. Marble was taken to the Agency at Yellow Medicine where, after several weeks, she was ransomed by Mr. Riggs and Dr. Williamson, who paid the Indians $1,000 for her release, which sum had been raised by Major Flandreau. Mrs. Marble at once did everything in her power to effect the rescue of her two surviving companions. Major Flandreau was also untiring in their behalf.
The Minnesota Legislature promptly appropriated $10,000 to be used by the Governor for the rescue of the captives. Large rewards were offered to friendly Indians and volunteers came forward at once. Major Flandreau procured an outfit and, on the 23d of May, a party started with orders to purchase the captive women at any price. Four companies of soldiers were to be marched at once from Fort Ridgely, as near Ink-pa-du-tah’s camp as was prudent, to fall upon the Sioux as soon as the captives were secured and exterminate the perpetrators of the massacre, if possible. But as the troops were ready to start, orders came for them to join General Johnston’s Utah. expedition and Ink-pa-du-tah’s band thus escaped punishment. While these events were transpiring, the two captive women were being taken farther into the wilds of Dakota and were hopeless of rescue.
One evening after the two women had gone to their tent, Roaring Cloud, a son of the chief, came in and ordered Mrs. Noble to come with him to his tepee. She indignantly refused to go. He seized her and attempted to drag her off. She resisted with all of her strength, determined then and there to end her wretched life, rather than again submit to the horrors from which there was no other escape. She alone of the helpless captives had often resisted the
ABBIE GARDNER SHARP
brutal savages, until her strength was exhausted and she was overpowered. Since the cruel murder of her friend, Mrs. Thatcher, she had felt life a burden. This night she nerved herself to welcome death. Wild with rage at her unyielding resistance, the young savage dragged her out of the tent, seized a club in his mad fury, beat her head again and again, leaving her mangled form by the door. For half an hour her dying moans reached the ears of the terrified girl, Abbie, who was cowering in a corner, now alone in the hands of the savages.
The next morning the Indians cut off the two dark heavy braids of hair from the head of the murdered woman, fastened them to a stick, and followed Abbie, switching her face with them, thus adding to her agony. Hurrying on day after day they reached the James River, where Ashton now stands. Here was an Indian village of about two thousand Sioux and Abbie abandoned all hope of rescue. But powerful friends were at work, spurred on by the urgent entreaties of Mrs. Marble. Major Flandreau had procured Indian goods of great value to tempt them and selected three of the most trusty of the race to proceed with all possible haste to overtake Ink-pa-du-tah’s band. John Other Day led the party and, on the 30th of May, reached the vicinity of the Sioux encampment, secreting the team and wagon. Entering the village he and his men soon learned that there was but one white woman remaining. After three days’ negotiations they succeeded in purchasing Miss Gardner. They took her to St. Paul, delivered her to Governor Medary and received $1,200 for their faithful services in rescuing the last of the surviving captives. The two women who were rescued never recovered from the brutal treatment they endured from the Indians while in captivity. While their lives were spared, their suffering, bodily and mentally, could only end with death. Abbie never saw Mrs. Marble after her release from captivity but found Mr. Thatcher and conveyed to him the last message of his young wife and the full particulars of her sad fate. At Hampton she found her sister, Eliza, who made her escape from the Springfield massacre. In 1885 Abbie Gardner Sharp wrote and published a full history of the massacre and her captivity, from which many of the facts here given were procured.
In all the narratives of Indian wars and barbarities that, for more than two hundred years, have marked the advance of civilization across the American continent, there are no pages in the bloody record more thrilling or pathetic than those recording the horrors which exterminated the first colony planted on the shores of Okoboji and Spirit Lakes. Of all the horrors endured by white women in Indian captivity, none have surpassed those of Elizabeth Thatcher, Lydia Noble, Abbie Gardner and Margaret A. Marble.
A son of Si-dom-i-na-do-tah (who was murdered with his family by Henry Lott, the desperado) saved the lives of one family. John B. Skinner, who had settled at the lakes, often befriended this boy, Josh, who was badly wounded at the time his father and family were massacred by Lott and his son. The boy recovered and at times found a home at Skinner’s. When his uncle, Ink-pa-du-tah, planned his raid for a terrible vengeance on the whites, Josh learned that the blow was to fall on the innocent, isolated colony at the lakes. He warned Skinner of danger, and so impressed it upon him, that Mr. Skinner moved back to Liberty and escaped the fate which befell his neighbors. Whether Mr. Skinner warned any others of the danger is not known. Josh also warned Mr. Carter, of Emmet County, of the impending massacre, and spent a part of the winter in Kossuth County. He was seen and recognized by Mrs. J. B. Thomas as one of the leaders in the attack upon their house at Springfield. He was undoubtedly engaged in the massacre at the lakes.
In 1862 Josh was one of the most active in the terrible Minnesota massacres, leading a band at Lake Shetek, which exterminated nearly the entire settlement. Thus 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:
“We pushed on, throwing out thirty scouts in advance to examine the groves and streams for signs of Indians, which were often found. At the State line we camped in a grove, where I detailed sixty men, armed with rifles and revolvers, to march all night in two divisions to surprise the Indians before daylight. Our guides reported Indians camped at the trading house of a half-breed named Gaboo. But we found they had fled at the approach of the fifty regulars from Fort Ridgely.
“Finding the troops from Fort Ridgely had not buried the dead, I detailed twenty-five men under Captain Johnson and Lieutenant Maxwell to march to the lakes and perform that sad duty. They found and buried thirty-one bodies, including the bones of those burned in the Mattocks house. Seven were killed at Springfield. I may sum up the total number of casualties to the settlers as follows: killed, 41; missing, 12; badly wounded, 3; prisoners, 4 women. At every place the Indians broke up and destroyed the furniture, burned houses and killed in all more than one hundred head of cattle. It seems to have been their purpose to exterminate the entire settlement in that region. Too much praise cannot be bestowed on the men under my command. Fourteen were badly frozen; Captain Johnson and William E. Burkholder perished in a terrible snow storm. Several men were deranged from their sufferings. We have a host of destitute and wounded persons thrown upon us to provide for, both from the Little Sioux River and the upper Des Moines, besides our own frozen and disabled men.
“We have driven all of the Indians out of the north part of the State, unless there may be some near the mouth of the Big Sioux.”In Governor Grimes’ message to the Seventh General Assembly, on the 12th of January, 1858, is a statement of the massacre and the Relief Expedition under Major Williams’ command, and he recommends that the State make an appropriation to compensate the men “who so gallantly and humanely periled their lives for others;” and for the expense of their outfit.
He further says:
- ↑ Capt. Bee was an officer of the regular army, a native of South Carolina and when that State seceded in 1861. left the United Stales service and was made a Brigadier-General. He was killed at the first battle of Bull Run.