Part III
In the early weeks of February the overland mail brought Dimon’s gift sword and other accoutrements for which Dimon’s men had raised $1,000 and so the presentation was made on President Lincoln’s birthday. In a letter to his sweetheart, the young colonel described his emotions: “The regiment was formed in a hollow square by Captain Upton and I was sent for. A sergeant stepped out and presented me with a sword, silk sash, embroidered belt, silver mounted pistol and field glass. I felt so completely worked up I could not hardly speak.”
However Dimon, refused to allow the gifts to soften his strict disciplinary program. In the following days when the weather had turned surprisingly warm, Dimon ordered his company commanders to resume their drills on the parade ground, from 2:00 to 3:00pm daily. The snow having melted off the grassy bottomlands, he also ordered up a herding detail to drive the regiments cattle 10 miles south to the Cannon Ball River, where grass was much more obtainable.
On February 20th the detail made camp, Private Francis Connor, left the camp alone to go for water, a hostile Indian was lurking in the bushes, when he saw the Private alone he quickly put three arrows into him; Private Francis Connor died two weeks later in the post hospital. Assuming the worst of the winter was past had proven to be incorrect. On Washington’s Birthday a terrible blizzard roared down from the north, which dropped temperatures well below 40 degrees; the herders and their cattle on the Cannon Ball barely managed to survive.
While the blizzard raged outside, the officers and men huddled in their crowded quarters, and “cabin fever” set in. One of Colonel Dimon’s stanches critics, a Captain Enoch Adams, (Grandfather Shive’s Captain) evidently at one time had gone too far, so on March 3rd Colonel Dimon felt compelled to issue a reprimand in the form of a general order:
Captain E. G. Adams, of Company “D”, 1st U.S. Volunteers, having used complaining and mutinous language without the least cause (and such complaining being in the Commanding Officer’s opinion the result of a diseased imagination) after having been repeatedly censured for so doing, it is ordered that he is hereby reprimanded. Any repetition of the offense will be met by immediate arrest.”
Dimon worried of more tensions, ordered one of the commissary buildings to be converted into a post theater. So men from each company competed with each other in the presentation of comical skits and musical performances. “The officers got so blue yesterday,” Dimon, wrote, “that they got our string band and had a dance in their quarters. Of course I could not join them on account of my rank.” It was a hollow sort of cheerfulness, however, because death was ever present, and the number of scurvy cases kept mounting, and burials details occurred every few days in the post graveyard.
On March 5th, Scurvy had claimed the regiment’s most highly respected member, Hospital Steward William H. Merriman. For his burial they lowered the post flag to half-mast, and every officer and soldier of the regiment marched to his funeral. The post Surgeon, Herrick delivered a eulogy in which he said that he felt as if he had lost “a faithful friend and brother.” Merriman was only 28, a farmer from Rogersville, Tennessee. It was in the fall of 1862, that Merriman had bid his wife and child farewell and marched of Mississippi with the 60th Tennessee. After being captured in the fighting around Vicksburg, he was sent to Point Lookout, and a year later took the oath and became a Galvanized Yankee. Just a matter of note my other Great Grandfather Joseph Smith Fanning was fighting for the North at Vicksburg with the 4th Illinois Cavalry, of Company “F”.
“Steward William H. Merriman began reading books on drugs,” Surgeon Herrick said, “and having an active mind and retentive memory became a trained apothecary. He was quiet and modest in his deportment. He always conducted himself in a Gentlemanly manner towards his superiors and with kindness to his inferiors.”
The regimental need for medical supplies grew graver for food and medical supplies, so grave were they that Colonel Dimon dispatched a wagon train down to Fort Sully, when the wagon train arrived the men were told that food and supplies were in short supply at Fort Sully also. At the same time Dimon dispatched the wagon train to Fort Sully, Dimon also sent a dispatch to General Sully in Iowa, and reporting the situation, he also requested two companies of cavalry to protect the fort from the Santee raiders, who were appearing much more frequently around the fort.
General Sully was unable to give any help in the way of supplies at least not until the boats were able to start running again, he was unable to send any cavalry to replace the four companies that Dimon had lost due to assignments to the Forts in Minnesota.
General Pope the general who at first was doubtful of their value as a regiment was unable to let the four companies return from Minnesota, because he was unable to spare them. I guess he figured they were good soldiers after all, but unable to say it?
The U.S. Volunteers learned on March 19th when the mail had arrived finally at the fort, that in the previous month Sherman’s army had captured Charleston, South Carolina, and was in the process of invading North Carolina. Colonel Dimon and his officers were jubilant over this news, so at noon a 13-gun salute was fired and also at sunset, I would imagine that the numerous Carolinians in the ranks must have viewed the celebrations with different feeling, if not mixed at best.
The long winter appeared to finally ending so Dimon ordered the cattle herding detail back from the Cannon Ball bottoms, so he turned his attentions back to sharpening up his soldiers. He ordered that all guards should begin walking their post in quick time; hand salutes must be given with more exactness and celerity. He furthered ordered each man must “have his hair neatly trimmed, clothing clean and properly adjusted, that properly looped up and trimmed, accoutrements blacked and put on in a soldier-like manner.”
With the Moderating weather more bands of Indians started to appear, and when a war party approached the fort on March 30th, Dimon ordered a platoon of mounted infantry to dashed out and scatter them. Lieutenant Jeremiah Cronan, of Company “H” captured two warriors—hostile Santees from the north. Now the fact that they were caught with British rifles revived Colonel Dimon’s suspicions of a Canadian-Confederate plot against the Forts along the Missouri River. If Colonel Dimon had been Alltel more experienced in the Northwester affairs, (Indian Affairs) he would have recognized this constant manipulation of the frontier tribes as being only a continuation of an already ancient war between rival fur interests. However there was only one war that mattered to Colonel Dimon, and if there was any way he could prove there was a Confederate influences at work in the Dakota Territory, he wanted to be the first man to find them.
The coming of April did not prove up to the expectations of the winter-weary regiment; in fact it was the cruelest month of them all, 15 men were dying of scurvy and two from Indian attacks. With many more ill with the disease, too those who were still able to go out on herding or logging details never knew when an arrow or bullet would strike them down. A mood of gloom carried over the post when Surgeon Herrick, became ill himself because many of the men wondered if they had exchanged the uncertainty of life at Point Lookout for the certainty of death at Fort Rice.
The 1st U.S. Volunteers experienced their first major Indian skirmish, which occurred on April 12th, when 200 mounted hostile Indians suddenly swept down from the hills behind the fort and attacked herders just outside the stockade. Private’s William Hughes and John Odum were killed in the first onrush of their attack.
In Colonel Dimon’s memorandum book, he noted the time of the attack as 1:00p.m. He recorded the casualties, and losses of 36 cattle, 19 mules, and 13 horses. At 5:00 p.m., he made another entry: Two Indians (Santees) captured by lieutenant Cronan March 30th and were shot to death.” The act of reprisal on Colonel Dimon’s part was not only ruthless but foolish, or just plain stupid, because the raiding Indians were Cheyenne and Sioux from the Platte River country, and the deaths of the two Minnesota Santees meant absolutely nothing to them. When the news of the executions were leaked out, it made General Sully’s efforts to pacify the belligerent Santees exceedingly difficult.
The executions did not have the effect Dimon had hoped for, a few days later, 300 hostile Indians surrounded the horse herd less than a mile from the fort. This time the seven herders were able to beat off the attack of the raiding Indians without the loss of a single animal. But Private Hiram Watson, a 19 year old from Harris, Georgia, did take an arrow in his chest, a terribly ugly wound that he would not be able to recover from.
The Indians having suffered several casualties themselves, turned down toward the river bottoms, and made an ineffectual attack on the loggers, and then late later on in the day had showed themselves on hilltops to the west. A few howitzer shells fired in their direction soon scattered them. Colonel Dimon was proud of the behavior of his Galvanized Yankees under fire, and he praised them in a report to General Sully. “They appeared cool, calm and collected, determined not to give an inch of ground.”
A lull ensued the two Indian attacks, so Colonel Dimon used this time to deal with the growing number of prisoners in the post guardhouse, he convened a court-martial. The sentences that were handed out were considerably more lenient than the one given poor old William Dowdy on board the Effie Deans. For leaving his post, Private S. H. Adams only received four months at hard labor. Private J. R. Lucky was lucky to receive two months for telling Drum-Major Conrad Badenhop “that he would not beat his drum if compelled to go on details for fatigue duty.” Private Francis McCarthy from Cork, Ireland, was charged with mutiny for declaring “he would whip any man who thought an Irishman could not fight,” he found someone too take him up on his challenge because he struck a Corporal after making that statement. He received two months at hard labor for being a tough guy. Peter Johnson, had charges of desertion brought against him, he only received three months, instead of being shot. Charles Snead, Newton Roach, and John Thompson, they were charged with absent-without leave and received three months for their troubles. But the most serious charge was against a 16-year-old private named John P. Allen, from Kershaw, South Carolina, Allen had been found sleeping on guard post, and he received 18 months at hard labor, plus forfeiture of pay.
The dreary Dakota landscape began showing traces of greenery with the coming of May showers. “The prairies and treeless hills are noted gratefully. But scurvy and the long winter had left two of every five men physically unable to perform normal duties. At the first signs of wild onions thrusting from the earth, Surgeon Herrick asked for a platoon detail, which he assigned to “Digging onions for the benefit of the sick.” The wild onions proved very effective; Herrick reported later that “the sanitary condition of the post is very much improved, the number on the sick list having decreased rapidly since the appearance of wild onions and the arrival of a few potatoes.” What Surgeon Herrick left out of his report was that Elizabeth Cardwell, was now pregnant.
The Cardwells found life at Fort Rice fairly pleasant. They lived in private quarters and Mrs. Cardwell had the fine company of five other ladies, who were the wives and daughters of licensed traders at the post. One of these women was a Mrs. Charles Galpin; she was a full-blooded Teton Sioux. She could speak only a few words of French and English, but was so attractive and friendly that she was well like by everyone, and she bared no stigma of “brevet-wife,” as did many of the Indian wives who married white men on the frontier. Captain Adams described her as “one of the finest women in the world,” her own people called her The-Eagle-Woman-That-All-Look-At. Her and Elizabeth Cardwell were especially close.
The potatoes that Surgeon Herrick mentioned in his report came from St Louis, which were ferried up the river on the “Riverboat Yellowstone”, which had tied up at Fort Rice’s landing for two days (May 9-10). The officers and men of Two Companies, “B”, and “K” were packing their equipment and boarding the riverboat in obedience to orders from General Sully, they were bound for Fort Union and Fort Berthold to relieve the companies from Wisconsin and the troops from Iowa.
An additional detachment under Lieutenant Cyrus Hutchins, of Company “H”, embarked on the Riverboat Deer Lodge for Fort Benton on May the 12th. Now this group of 10 men had the honor of serving at the farthest point north from all of the posts and stations occupied by the Galvanized Yankees.
The departure of these units, left Fort Rice rather thin with a garrison of just under 300 men, and at a time when the hostile Indian attacks were becoming much more frequent, the fort could ill afford a loss of any more companies. Because on May 19th, a fatigue party was attacked near the blockhouse, and Private John Cumbey from Campbell, Virginia, was wounded. Just one week later, 25 Sioux ambushed Lieutenant Benjamin Wilson as he was leaving the post with a logging detail, Wilson was riding ahead of his men and was cut off from his men when the Indians rushed upon him from a nearby ravine. The three arrows knocked him off his horse; he had taken an arrow in the shoulder, one in the thigh, and another in the back.
From the trader’s house at the edge of the fort, Mrs. Galpin witnessed the attack from her trader’s house from the edge of the fort. Without thinking of her own safety, she rushed to Wilson’s aid, reaching him as the attackers galloped up to scalp and mutilate him. Mrs. Galpin had recognized them as Sioux, so she cried out in their own tongue: “This man belongs to me now! You cannot mutilate or touch him!” Evidently the Sioux had heard her cries because they then galloped around her and then after a minute or so, they left darting away in pursuit of the men who had been separated from Lieutenant Wilson. Already the bugler was sounding the alarm inside the fort, as soon as the Indians saw the soldiers rushing from the gates of the fort; they galloped away as fast as they could.
Even though Lieutenant Wilson was crazed with pain, he tried to pull the arrow’s out while doing so he broken them off. All Mrs. Galpin was able to do was to hold Lieutenant Wilson’s head in her lap until the stretcher-bearers arrived. They took him to the post hospital where his condition was pronounced as serious due to the arrow that was lodged in his back had penetrated his lung. Again a pall of gloom had fallen over Fort Rice. The men of the fort liked Lieutenant Wilson’s cheerful nature; he had won the friendship of the entire garrison.
About the same time as the attack General Sully was making his report to his headquarters on the conditions at the fort. He wrote “The great amount of sickness and death at Fort Rice is terrible,” “Eleven per cent of the command have died this winter. The soldiers of that garrison are composed of rebel prisoners: men who have been a long time confined as prisoners of war, and of course they are now predisposed to such sickness as scurvy and diarrhea. As soon as possible I will have a more thorough investigation of the causes. I have been obliged to order two of the companies to garrison Forts Union and Berthold. This with the great amount of sickness will weaken that garrison too much.”
The men at Fort Rice like most men of their time had come to grips with death, and could even at times find consolation in the appearance of the forts ever enlarging cemetery. “There is a look of civilization about it,” as one soldier wrote in a letter to his family back home. “That reminds one of a cemetery in the States. Its fences as well as whole arrangement is neat, and shows the gallant dead are not forgotten.”
On June 2nd one more grave was added to the cemetery, for Lieutenant Wilson had passed away from his wounds. His last request was to look upon the face of Mrs. Galpin; he thanked her for saving him from the scalping knife, then died while holding her hand. Upon his death Colonel Dimon declared a day of mourning, and the entire regiment had formed ranks to march out to cemetery.
Early on the morning of June 2nd, Indians had appeared simultaneously at five different points thus encircling the fort; Colonel Dimon had accepted the advice of his Sioux friends that these were hostile Indians bent on attacking the fort.
As events had proven later, the Indians were only curious passerby and enemies of Two Bear and Bear Rib’s. But when Colonel Dimon sent out his mounted infantry, with a howitzer, and 60 warriors of Two Bear’s and Bear Rib’s band’s, the wandering hunters accepted the challenge and decided to fight. All it took was a few shells from the howitzer, and they scattered but in so doing they left behind numerous robes and blankets. Whether Colonel Dimon was aware of it or not Dimon had come to accept the enemies of both Chiefs as his enemies, this became a situation, which would lead only to trouble for Fort Rice, and it did.
It turned out to be a victory for Fort Rice, but it was not the type of actions to make friends among all the different tribes along the upper Missouri Valley. When old General Sully, who was still down at Sioux City planning a summer peace parley, herd the news of Colonel Dimon’s glowing report of the Victory, well lets just say he was somewhat upset.
General Sully had excused Colonel Dimon’s execution of the two Santee Indian prisoners back in April as an foolish act of an inexperienced officer, but this time he had decided he had better prepare General Pope for a change of command at Fort Rice.
Sully wrote to General Pope, “General: There is a matter I wish to write to you unofficially, just as I would talk to you if I could see you, that is in regard to Col. Dimon, commanding 1st U.S. Volunteers and the post at Fort Rice. I admire his energy and pluck, the determination with which he carries out orders; but he is too young, too rash, for his position, and it would be well if eventually for you, in his overzealous desire to do his duty. Toward yourself and myself he is very friendly and anxious to carry out his instructions, and he is one of the best disciplinarians and most energetic men I have met with. Perhaps when I see him and talk to him I can change matters and curb him; but if I cannot do this, and I feel it necessary to act, I should like to have the authority to do so, and I think the best way would be an order making his headquarters in Minnesota, with his other battalion, or any way you may think best. I do not wish to hurt his feelings, but I think the interest of the government would be advanced by having an older and cooler head at Fort Rice. This regiment was raised and organized by Ben Butler and he is too much like him in his actions for an Indian country, but he is just the sort of a man I would like to have under me in the field.
ALF. SULLY.
Pope’s immediate reply was: “In relation to Colonel Dimon you can act as you think best.” Sully had meanwhile ordered Company “G” of the 6th Iowa Cavalry transferred from Fort Berthold to Fort Rice. The company was commanded by veteran Indian fighter Captain A. B. Moreland, who Sully hoped would serve to counteract the influences of Two Bear’s and Bear Rib’s. Captain Moreland and his Iowans found themselves well received by the 1st U.S. Volunteers, they found Captain Moreland a genial, quiet gentleman and officer, and his men well-behaved and willing to do their duty.
Quartermaster S. B. Noyes of the 1st U.S. Volunteers, was going through various supplies left behind by the 30th Wisconsin, among the supplies Noyes had found a small printing press along with a few reams of paper. This press was used to publish a newspaper at Fort Union in the summer of 1864. So the Quartermaster and some other officers proposed to publish a newspaper at Fort Rice.
So after securing approval from Colonel Dimon, Captain Enoch Adams and Lieutenant Charles Champney started to set up the press in a workshop at the northeast end of the fort. With Captain Adams volunteering to be the editor that left Lieutenant Champney as the publisher.
The two then set out to look for a typesetter among the ranks of the regiment. As luck would have it they found a typesetter, a Corporal William Johnson. Among the regular contributors was Lance-Sergeant Pinkney A. Morgan, who was an amateur poet from Greenville, South Carolina, and Surgeon George Herrick, composed all the essays. And they ranged from the Empress Josephine to memories of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So on June 15th, the first volume, number one of the Frontier Scout Appeared. “The Frontier Scout,” editor Adams announced: Is published weekly by the 1st U.S. Volunteers for the edification of the people of Dacotah, both civilized and savage; and as “green” spots and “green” backs are so few, we will not mention terms, but bid it, like the grace of God, go free! You must support us with your contributions, material and mental. We can make a paper lively, social, agreeable, entertaining and refreshing, but all must contribute a mite. Put every smart thought into writing. Jot down every little adventure. Fashion into rhymes every practical idea. When this is done our paper is formed, a living, speaking embodiment of the society in which we dwell. Let it be a picture of the sunny side of Dacotah; something we shall keep or cherish like the lock of hair of a lost loved one, or a flower picked and pressed by a dead sister in far-away years.
The paper reported on reports of Indian activities, all military matters, and of course death’s, on the lighter side the paper carried sketches on subjects of the post’s pets. A tame Wolf Dickey had carried a ration of salt pork to a basin of water to freshen it. “He don’t calculate to die with scurvy-not he.” A bear named Grizzly was begging the post out of sugar. Two sheep arrived on the steamboat, Silver Lake, which astonished the Indians who had never seen such animals and believed them to be a strange species of deer. Jokes appeared on the same pages with the obituaries:
Q: Why is cottonwood like Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral?
A: Because it is used for you (cough’n) coffin.
Q: In what military position is a soldier with a hole in the seat of his pants?
A: To the rear, open order.
In the same paper an advertisement announced that D.W. Marsh, sutler, was “prepared to furnish you with all the necessities of frontier life.” A spoofing notice declared that Quartermaster Noyes was accepting grasshoppers that have had the audacity to destroy our fine garden of the garrison, Scurvy.”
All the steamboat arrivals and departures were listed in almost every issue, the Yellowstone, Deer Lodge, Lillie Martin, Twilight, Roanoke, Fanny Ogden, Hattie May, General Grant, and their of course the 1st U.S. Volunteer’s grand old lady herself the Effie Deans.
Practically all the humorous rhyme reflected the new and strange life, including the natives of Dakota Territory, as in “The Dying Indian’s Request”:
O bury me not in obscurity,
But bury me up in the top of a tree,
When my spirit goes to the Land of souls
Set me up on two bean poles
Where I cannot be eaten by wolves and foxes
That eat “them” fellows they put in boxes
Fix round my head a feathery wreath
Round my throat bear’s claws like harrow teeth
Bring me a bow and bring me an arrow
And plenty of “Toro” that’s made of marrow
Set me a feast and light me my pipe,
Each is a sign, and emblem and type
Of something I never was able to tell,
But do it all, and it will be well.
Farewell squaw! Farewell papoose,
From life my spirit is cutting loose,
My eyes grow dim, I cannot see,
I have left this world, and climbed a tree.
Captain Adams signed his name to most of the metered compositions: the others were anonymous. I believe the more romantic efforts were the work of the love smitten poet, Sergeant Pinkney Morgan, who was a tall gray-eyed, sandy-haired lad of about 20, who was in love with a young girl named, Jinnie, she lived back home in South Carolina. And for her he composed 14 quatrains, which he called “Ballad of Love’s Independence.” Morgan set his work in type for publication in the Frontier Scout, but decided not too, because it was to personal to share with his fellow soldiers. However he did publish it privately, the first was a separate poem to be printed in Dakota. The closing verse is I believe indicative of its nature:
If I die far from thee, my love
Oh bury me between a turtledove
To show to your dearest love,
In years to come I died for love.
The Frontier Scout quickly became the unofficial news organ for the upper Missouri Valley. Captain Adams (editor) and his assistants had seen to it that copies of the newspaper were distributed aboard every passing steamboat, which in turned passed copies of the Frontier Scout to other boats along the river.
Captain Adams also urged there readers to “send our Scout down to our friends in the States, showing we are still living, moving, stirring, acting beings, that the great American heart still beats in our bosoms, that the genius, effort, and perseverance that settled the States, is taking deep root in Dacotah, on the banks of Missouri, the great highway of a broader, deeper civilization.”
Rumors of a captive white woman drifted into Fort Rice, in Mid-June causing a lot of excitement. With everyone remembering the story of Fanny Kelly, who had been rescued during the winter down at Fort Sully; who had already a national celebrity. Colonel Dimon’s Indian friends told him that a band of Cheyenne’s in the near vicinity were in the possession of another white woman; Dimon became obsessed with rescuing her. His first move was to send a mounted force out on a pretend buffalo hunt; but in actuality, the buffalo hunters were in search of the Cheyenne camp. Soon the hunting party returned to the fort empty-handed. A small band of Tetons arrived at the fort on June 17th. And with the help of the post interpreter, Frank La Framboise, learned that a Minneconjou named White White who was traveling with the Cheyenne, had purchased the white woman for two horses; and that he would be willing to sell her to the soldier chief for two good American horses.
Colonel Dimon agreed to the trade and sent Grass and one of his warriors, Red Horse, out to the Cheyenne camp, with two of the fort’s finest mounts. On June 21, they returned with Sarah Morris, who had been captured on January 10th during a raid along the Platte River in Colorado.
Sarah Morris was described as “an attractive, small-featured young woman, her skin deeply tanned after her six months of living in the open, her hair a lustrous black.” She and her husband, who of which was killed in the raid, had just moved to Colorado from Delaware County, Indiana. Her story, sometimes was incoherent, sometimes graphic in its detail, was taken down by one of Colonel Dimon’s clerks:
I was living at American Ranch on the Platte River in Colorado at the time of my capture by the Cheyenne’s. My family consisted of my husband, William Morris, one child, my own, and an adopted one. My child’s name was Charley. The adopted on we called Joseph. It was the 10th of January 1865 the Indians attacked the house where we lived. The party consisted of about one hundred. It was near 10 A.M. We kept a hotel. They set the house and stables afire, and drove us into the pilgrim room. At last the doors of the pilgrim room got in flames, and we had to leave. We ran out towards the river, through the corral, hoping to make our escape. My husband said perhaps we could escape that way. When we got to the corral we found we could not.
He told me to stop, that they would probably take me prisoner, and he possibly might get away. They surrounded him, and killed him and another man as they were running to the river. The Indians stood so thickly about me; I could not see him when he was killed. He had no arms of any kind with him. My baby, 15 months old, died about a month ago. The Sioux took Joseph and have him yet. They put me on a pony, and went south about fifty miles. They have been traveling, and I with them most of the time since. At their first camping ground they stayed three or four days, holding there scalp dances. Since they have been moving north. About four day ago they told me they were going to bring me in to the whites, pointing this way, saying “Sioux, sugar, coffee, heap.” My joy knew no bounds. I certainly know they killed my husband, for they told me there were four men killed at the Ranch and they were all there were there. At the time of my capture I received five wounds from arrows and six stabs from knives. They also struck me across the head with their whips.
My wounds are not entirely healed. An Indian, who could talk English, told me after I arrived in camp that if I showed them the wounds in my shoulders, they would not kill me, as it was their intention to do. The old chief who took me doctored me with his medicine, and my wounds partially healed up. He treated me very well, making me do scarcely anything except pack on my back a few keys of water, and saddle my pony. He gave me plenty of meat, which was all he had. He however did not like my little boy. My baby was afraid of him and would cry. One day he took him by the neck and threw him down, and stamped on him. The child then took sick, and died in about three weeks. They wanted to bury him before he was fairly dead. I had hard work to keep them from doing it. He sunk away, and I knew he was not entirely dead. After his death they put him in a coffee sack, and laid him in a hole in the ravine, hardly covering him over. I wanted them to dig the grave deeper, but they would not. The chief’s name is White White. He is the one that brought me in. I think the Indians are getting frightened. I saw while a captive one white woman and baby, she was taken by the Sioux but traded off to the Cheyenne’s. They let her stay with me about two hours. They promised to let her visit me the next day, but did not. She stated that she was captured on the Little Blue. The circumstances of her capture were these. A young woman came to pay her a visit, and she and her husband went to see her home. They killed her husband, and the two women were taken captive. (They were Lucinda Eubanks and Laura Roper, whose stories I shall tell later on). She said that while she was with the Sioux she was used meanly, but better after sold to the Cheyenne’s. She knew of still another woman captured on the Little Blue.
