Andrew Johnson

TOPEKA, KANSAS, AUGUST 17, 1868.

 

To His Excellency Andrew Johnson, President:

I have just returned from Northwestern Kansas, the scene of a terrible Indian massacre. On the thirteenth and fourteenth instant, forty of our citizens were killed and wounded by the hostile Indians. Men, women and children were murdered indiscriminately. Many of them were scalped and their bodies mutilated. Women after receiving m9rtal wounds were outraged, and otherwise inhumanly treated in the presence of their dying husbands and child­ren. Two young ladies and two little girls were carried away by the red-handed assassins, to suffer a fate worse than death. Houses were robbed and burned, and a large quantity of stock driven off.

The settlers, covering a space of sixty miles wide, and reaching from the Saline to the Republican, were driven in, the country laid in ashes and the soil drenched in blood. How long must we submit to such atrocities? Need we look to the Government for protection or must the people of Kansas protect themselves? If the Government cannot control these uncivilized barbarians, while they are under its fostering care and protection, it certainly can put a stop to the unbearable policy of supplying them with arms and ammunition, especially while they are waging war notor­iously against frontier settlements, from the borders of Texas to the plains of Dakota. The savage devils have be­come intolerable, and must and shall be driven out of this State. Gen. Sheridan is doing and has done, all in his pow­er to protect our people, but he is powerless for want of troops. If volunteers are needed, I will if desired, furnish the Government all that may be necessary to insure a per­manent and lasting peace.

S.J. CRAWFORD, Governor of Kansas