Warren Sheaf from Warren, Minnesota • Page 7

h'i BETWEEN TWO RIVERS. ift A Visit to This Historic Spot JS Some Gruesome Relics, 'Sf BY ALEX. MILDER. 0 Copyrighted. 1902, by Alex.

Miller. It is stated that there are more Indians in the United States to-day tliau there were at the time Columbus discovered America. The legend is that Columbus sailed to land, and he was about to step ashore when Lo stepped out from behind a tree and ejaculated with as much emotion as an Indian is capable of: "It's no us-e, we are discovered." He gave it up, and from that day to this there has been a constant hostility between the pale faces and his dusky brothers. It is shocking to read in the life of Columbus by Irving what atrocities were committed upon the Indians. I l-eads like a chapter out of the Spanish Inquisition.

If Irving was straight on his facts, and he very likely was, the Indians of the West India Islands Uiad made considerable progress in civilization. What I mean is, the natives who were called by Columbus Indians, it is well known that having arrived at what he suposed to be a portion of Asia, or East India he called the land 'West India and the people he called Indians. They had some sort of government. The chief ruler or chief was called a Cacique. They also had some sort of religion and were happy.

True to the Spanish nature, the Indians were at once enslaved and compelled to work in the mines, for there nvas some little gold to be found. Besides that, these children of the forest wh had lie's er known what work was ibeyond the chase and fishing were obliged by their cruel Spanish masters to work on the farms in the hot sun and in unhealthy localities till the most of them perished. It is not much wonder then that there are Indian massacres to record. Spirit Lake Monument. Small Monu- Gardner Family.

short iourney. An Indian can hate ell and long. So wheu the Sioux Indians -ent on the war path with all their savage fierceness and cruelty it was not for anything that the settlers of Dickinson County had done, but it went back several hundred years and it erecl all the time intervening. The Indian could not distinguish between one white man and another. All looked alike to him.

He wanted revenge. Not for any wrong that he had Buffered, perhaps, but all his education for hundreds of years had been to hate the whites. Out of this teaching and parental influence on the Indian character greAv one of the bloodiest massacres of the West, and the only one of Iowa. It is oalled the Spirit Lake Massacre, but as a matter of fact it did not occur on Spirit Lake but on Lake Okiboji. A settlement had been started on Lake Okiboji in the summer of 1S56.

There were some forty or fifty settlers in the settlement. One of the leaders in the pioneer settlement was Rowland Gardner. Without stopping go into the causes leading to the massacre I propose to give a brief eketch of the occurrence and of the place as it is today. For full particulars of the tragedy I must refer you to the book written by the lone survivor of that fearful time. The hook is written by Abigail Gardner Sharp.

She Is the sole survivor of that frightful episode. In March, 1857, then, the Indians, tinder the pretence of friendship, attacked the little settlement and taking each man unawares killed more than forty of the settlers, whose names we wiill give as we proceed. Rowland Gardner's house was entered by an Indian who asked for flour. As he was stooping over the barrel to get the flour the Indian shot him, right in the presence of his wife and children. The rest of the were then slain except Abigail, whom they reserved for even a worse fate.

She was taken prisoner. She saw the shooting of Qtier faJther and the murder of the children, and also of a number of the other settlers. The children were not -(considered worth shooting, BO they The Spirit Lake Indian Massacre, 1 It is not much wonder either, if itpity is true, which I doubt, that there are anore Indians to-day than in the early (times. In those days whom the SpanSards did not kill, were killed off in indeterminate and unceasing Indian wars. What between pestilence and dirt and filth and Indian wars and toeing killed off by the invaders, the fcnchan had a hard time of it.

It is a long ways from Hispanolia, the West lndias, to Spirit Lake, Iowa, in point of miles and in years, 'but in the life of a nation and its liopes and ambitions and aspirations and sufferings and gladness it is but mould pick them up by the feet and dash their 'brains out against the trees and the sides of the buildings. After all had been murdered and the huts destroyed, and most of them burned, and when the stock had been killed off and the houses plundered of what little they contained, the Indians started off on their journey to the northwest. They took with them Abigail Gardner and three other girls and women. Jfhey were Mrs. Thatcher, Mrs.

Noble and Mrs. Marble. All were cruelly murdered, however, before they got very far except Mrs. Marble and Abigail Gardner. The rescue of each sounds like the stories of the Revolutionary times.

"Alice of Old Vincennes" had no more startling experiences than Abigail Gardner, and it seems queer that no romancer has woven the true story into a book of wonderful interest. Mrs. Marble was rescued by some friendly Indians, who took her to a trading post in Minnesota, and she was ransomed by the missionaries and government authorities stationed at that place. Miss Abigail Gardner was kept a captive by the villainous Sioux for three months, which she says seems to her to have been the longest period of her life. She was subjected to every indignity.

The big bucks seemed to delight in frightening her. They would make all sorts of tnreats and would feint motions to kill her and mangle her, all for the purpose of distressing her as much as possible. I visited the scene of the massacre isome time ago and got the story of Abigail Gardner from her own lips. I is more interesting than any of Cooper's tales, and lays in the shade any of the historical romances of the day. During her captivity she was compelled to walk day in and day out, for they were constantly on the move.

I was a cold, wet Spring and the Indians kept moving, following the game They had with them their and their entire outfit. Buffaloes were very plentiful in that part of Iowa and Minnesota. They took her as far as Dakota, somewhere on the Jim River. A council of war was held in which all of the big warriors took part. I was evident to her that she was the cause of the council and the subject of their deliberations.

Nobody took any on her, however. The warriors would whet their knives In her presence and they would point their pistols in her face. They gave her to understand that she was to be tortured and killed. Finally an old squaw seemed to have a little femininity left and she imparted the information that she was to be returned to her own people. That is, to the white trading post in Minnesota.

Of her own people or of her settlement none remained except a sister, who was in Indiana the time of the massacre, and never came back. She has never seen her since. One is not able to get much information from her on the period following the massacre. She dwells only on the time of her captivity and on the time since the massacre giound has been made State ground. She drifted from place to place, as near as one can find out, and finally she was married to Mr.

Sharp, and to them two sons were born. Both were married, and one, with his wife, ha since died, and both are buried in the family lot. Her other son lives in the vicinity of the old massacre ground. The State took up the matter of erecting a monument to the pioneers who gave up their lives to the cause humanity, just as much as John the Baptist did, or just as much as did the Revolutionary Fathers. Whether one loses his lite in battle with an invading host or whether he is slain by the savage of the forest does not matter.

He is a martyr to the cause of civilization. If there had not been Daniel Boones and Captain Clarks and Mad Anthony Waynes and General CListers and the Gardners and the Howes and the Luces there would have been no progress and there would be no place in which to talk politics and to discuss religion and to find fault with the government. In every age and in every country there must be sacrifice. There is no excellence without great labor, and sometimes it costs human life. It did cost human life at Okiboji in that stormy and rigorous Spring of 1857.

For many years no effort had been made to commemorate this bloody event. At one time some society or other, I forgot what it was, had raised $14 for the erection of a monument, but it was not considered sufficient to purchase much of a shaft. I would scarcely have bought a good telegraph pole in that prairie country. Wood was high. So the matter dropped.

Monument matters frequently do drop. I took the whole United States years to erect a monument to the Father of his country, so you couldn't expect too much from just a single State. Abigail Gardner Sharp wrote her book in 1885. The book seemed to revive interest in the place where the massacre occurred. Work was begun to get an appropriation to buy the land and erect a suitable monument.

After a long period of watching and waiting the bill was finally passed, with but one dissenting vote in the lower house and one or two in the upper. Probably some Senator wanted to make a reputation for economy. Some politicians would chip marble off their mother's tombstone to make a reputation. Th monument was built in 1895. I ismanner of granite, and is a beautiful column, probably seventy feet high, and upon the sides are various inscriptions.

On one side, and the one which naturally attracts you first, are the names of the victims of the massacre. I give the names not because it is specially interesting, for lists of names are apt to be but dry and indifferent reading, but whoever reads these lines may run across a familiar name, and begides it seems to me they are worthy of perpetuation. I know of no history that contains them, The only place where they are recorded is in the official records of the State. The names are: Robert Clark, Rowland Gardner, Frances M. Gardner, Rowland Gardner, Carl Granger, Jos.

Hassleman, Isaac H. Ilerriott, Joel Howe, Millie Howe, Jonathan Howe, Sardis Howe, Alfred Howe. Jacob Howe, Philetus Howe, Harry Luce, Mary M. Luce, Albert Luce. Amanda Luce, William Wood, James II.

Mattock, Alice Mattock, Daniel Mattock, Agnes Mattock, Jacob Mattock, Jackson Mattock, William Marble, Robert Mathieson, Lydia Noble, Alvin Noble, John Noble, Enoch Ryan, Bertell A. Snyder, Joshua Stewart. Avite and two children, Elizabeth Thateller. Eldora Thatcher, Geo. Wood.

This represents the pioneers and the members of their families who were massacred in that early Spring in 1857. As stated, the Indians came professing friendship and caught the whites absolutely off their guard. One of the settlers who had been away from home, returning found that the settlement had been destroyed and he Original Gardner Cabin, Enclosed With Lattice to Treserve It. hastened to Ft. Dodge, the nearest settlement, to spread the alarm.

A relief party was sent out from Ft. Dodge and Webster City. Among the soldiers you will recognize many who have since become prominent in the State's history. From tihe monument wre got the names of the relief expedition. There were three companies under command of Major William Williams.

He was an experienced Indian fighter, sixty-two years old. Company A's officers and men Captain C. B. Richards, First Lieutenant F. A.

Stratton, Sergeant L. K. Wright, Corporal Solon, Mason. Privates W. E.

Burkholder, G. W. Brazee, C. C. Carpenter, L.

D. Crawford, Julius Conrad, Henry Carse, Henry Chatterton, Wm. DeFore, J. W. Dawson, Wm.

Ford, John Farney, John Gales, Andrew Hood, D. Westerfield, August McBane, Wm. McCaully, Mike Malier, E. Maher, W. P.

Pollock, W. F. Porter, B. Parmenter, L. Ridgeway, Winton Smith, RA Smith, d.

S. Spencer, C. Stephens, Ellas Donahue, R. U. Whelock.

Company was under Captain F. Duncombe, First Lieutenant Linn, Second Lieutenant S. C. Stevens, Sergeant W. N.

Koons, Corporal Thomas Callahan. Privates Jesse Addington, A. Burch, Hiram Benjamin, D. Baker, Orlando Bice, Richard Carter, A. E.

Crounse, R. I. Carter, Michael Cavanaugh, Jeremiah Evans, John Hafley. O. C.

Howe, D. F. Howell, A. S. Johnson, Jonas Murray, Daniel Morrisey, G.

F. McClure, A. H. Macombe. Michael McCarty, N.

McFarland. Robert MeCormick, John Olaughlm, Daniel Akeson, Guernsey Smith, John Thatcher, Searles. John White, W. R. Wilson, Washington Wilkins, Reuben Whetstone.

Company Captain J. C. Johnson, First Lieutenant J. N. Maxwell, Second Lieutenant F.

R. Mason, Sergeant Harris Hoover, Corporal A. N. Hathaway. Privates 'luomas Anderson, James Brainard, T.

B. Bonebright, Sherman Cassaday, L. Church, Patrick Conlan, H. F. Dalley, John Erie, John Gates, E.

W. Gates. Josiah Griffith, James Hickey, H. C. Hillock, W.

W. Howland, E. D. Kellogg, W. K.

Laughlin, A. S. Leonard, W. V. Lucas, F.

R. Moody, John Nowland, C. Pemberton, Alonzo Richardson, Michael Sweeney, Patrick Stafford, A. K. Tullis, G.

R. Russel, surgeon G. B. Sherman, com'p. The three companies started out across the prairie, a distance of about seventy miles, and it was a most perilous undertaking.

The weather was terribly cold and the snow was frozen three to five feet deep on the level and twelve to fifteen in the ravines. A good many had frozen feet and hands, but they pressed onward till within some miles of the scene of the massacre. They were met by white settlers who were coming south from Springfield, as fast as they could and from them they leamea that there was nothing at Spirit Lake, or rather at Lake Okiboji, to save. So a detachment consisting of ten or twenty men was sent on to bury the dead and the rest returned home. So, as a matter of fact, the men whose names appear on the monument as members of the relief expedition never all got to the massacre ground, but their intentions were as patriotic as those who went.

I twas fitting that the great State of Iowa should honor all alike. The dead were buried in the best possible. They were buried Where they were found. Most of them were buried near their cabins. There was no funeral ceremony, and there were no mourners except the soldiers, for they had all been killed except the three wiomen who were carried off by the Indians.

There was no funeral flirge played and no one placed wreaths on their coffins. There were no flowers and there were no coffins, but the angels dropped a tear of pity and the archangels sang a requiem over Uhe tragic scene. Their memory will be (Continued in next issue.) Lot 2, block 9, Wentzel Grindelaud's addition. Fine house, good barn and buggy shed. Lot 180x235.

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