1857-1862.—Spirit Lake.—Massacres by Inkpadoota.—The Captives.—Delivery of Mrs. Marble and Miss Gardner.—Excitement.—Inkpadoota’s Son Killed.—United States Soldiers.—Major Sherman.—Indian Councils.—Great Scare.—Going Away.—Indians Sent After Scarlet End.—Quiet Restored.—Children at School.—Quarter-Century Meeting.—John P. Williamson at Red Wood.—Dedication of Chapel.

By the northern line of Iowa, where the head-waters of the Des Moines come out of Minnesota, is a lake, or group of lakes, called the “Minne Wakan,” Mysterious Water, or, as the name goes, Spirit Lake. Sometime in 1855, this beautiful spot of earth was found and occupied by seven or eight white families, far in advance of other white settlements. In the spring of 1857, there were in this neighborhood and at Springfield, ten or fifteen miles above on the Des Moines, and in Minnesota, nearly fifty white persons. During the latter part of that winter the snows in Western Iowa and Minnesota were very deep, so that traveling on the prairies was attended with great difficulty.

It appears that during the winter a few families of annuity Sioux, belonging to the somewhat roving band of Leaf Shooters, had, according to their habit, made a hunting expedition down into Iowa, on the Little Sioux. Inkpadoota, or Scarlet End, and his sons were the principal men. The deep snows made game scarce and hunting difficult, so that when, in the month of March, this party of Dakotas came into the Spirit Lake settlement, they were in a bad humor from hunger, and attempted at once to levy blackmail upon the inhabitants. Their wishes not being readily complied with, the Indians proceeded to help themselves, which at once brought on a conflict with the white people, and the result was that the Indians massacred almost the entire settlement, killing about forty persons and taking four women captive.

Some one carried the news to Fort Ridgely, and a company of soldiers was sent out to that part of the country, but with small prospect of finding and punishing the Indians. The deep snows prevented rapid marching, and the party of Scarlet End, who were still in the Spirit Lake country, managed to see the white soldiers, albeit the soldiers could not discover them.

Soon after this event, we, at the Yellow Medicine, heard of it by a courier who came up the Minnesota. It proved to be quite as bad as represented. But nothing could be done at that season of the year, either to obtain the captives or punish the perpetrators. So the spring passed. When the snows had melted away, and the month of May had come, there came a messenger from Lac-qui-parle to Dr. Williamson and myself, saying that Sounding Heavens and Gray Foot, two sons of our friend Spirit Walker, had brought in one of the captive women taken by Scarlet End’s party, and asking us to come up and get her that she might be restored to her friends.

We lost no time in going up to Lac-qui-parle. At the trader’s establishment, then in the keeping of Weeyooha, the father of Nawangmane win, who was the wife of Sounding Heavens, we found Mrs. Marble, rather a small but good-looking white woman, apparently not more than twenty-five years old. She was busily engaged with the aforesaid Mrs. Sounding Heavens, in making a calico dress for herself. When I spoke to her in English, she was at first quite reserved. I asked if she wanted to return to her friends. She replied: “I am among my friends.”

She had indeed found friends in the two young men who had purchased her from her captors. They took her to their mother’s tent who had many years before become a member of the Lac-qui-parle church, and been baptized with the Christian name of Rebekah. They clothed her up in the best style of Dakota women. They gave her the best they had to eat. They brought her to their planting-place, and furnished her with materials with which to dress again like a white woman. It was no wonder she said, “I am among my friends.” But, after talking awhile, she concluded it would be best for her to find her white friends. She did not before understand that these Dakota young men had bought her, and carefully brought her in, with the hope of being properly rewarded. They were not prepared to keep her as a white woman, and really, with her six or seven weeks’ experience as an Indian, she would hardly care to choose that kind of life.

Mrs. Marble’s husband had been killed with those who were slain at Spirit Lake. Her story was that four white women were reserved as captives. They were made to carry burdens and walk through the melting snow and water. When they came to the Big Sioux, it was very full. The Indians cut down a tree, and the white women were expected to walk across on that. One of the woman fell off, and her captor shot her in the water. Her fellow-captives thought she was better off dead than alive. When Mrs. Marble was rescued from her captors, two others still lived, Mrs. Nobles and Miss Abbie Gardner. The Indians were then west of the Big Sioux, in the valley of the James or Dakota River.

We took Mrs. Marble down, accompanied by Sounding Heavens, Gray Foot, and their father, Wakanmane. She remained a few days at our mission home at Hazelwood, and in the meantime Major Flandreau, who was then Indian agent, paid the young men $500 in gold, and gave them a promissory note for the like amount. This was a very creditable reward.

But what was most important to be done, just then, was to rescue the other two women, if possible. We had Dakota men whom we could trust on such a mission better than we could trust ourselves. There was Paul Mazakootamane, the president of the Hazelwood Republic. White people said he was lazy. There was truth in that. He did not like to work. But he was a real diplomatist. He could talk well, and he was skilled in managing Indians. For such a work there was no better man than he. Then, there was John Otherday, the white man’s friend. He could not talk like Paul; but he had rare executive ability, and he was a fearless fellow. There was no better second man than he. For the third man we secured Mr. Grass. These three we selected, and the agent sent them to treat for Miss Gardner and Mrs. Nobles. They took with them an extra horse and a lot of goods. In about three weeks they returned, but only brought Miss Gardner. Mrs. Nobles had been killed before they reached Scarlet End’s camp.

As a consequence of this Spirit Lake trouble, we lived in a state of excitement all the summer. At one time the report came that Inkpadoota’s sons, one or more of them, had ventured into the Yellow Medicine settlement. News was at once taken to Agent Flandreau, who came up with a squad of soldiers from Fort Ridgely, and, with the help of John Otherday and Enos Good Hail, and others, this son of a murderer was killed, and his wife taken prisoner. The excitement was very great, for Scarlet End’s family had friends among White Lodge’s people at the Yellow Medicine.

Then came up Maj. T. W. Sherman with his battery. The Spirit Lake murderers must be punished, but the orders from Washington were that the annuity Indians must do it. To persuade them to undertake this was not an easy task. It is very doubtful whether the plan was a wise one. There were too many Dakotas who sympathized with Inkpadoota. This appeared in the daring of a young Dakota, who went into Major Sherman’s camp and stabbed a soldier. He was immediately taken up and placed under guard, but it was a new element in the complication.

Council after council was held. Little Crow, and the chiefs and people generally of Red Wood, were at the Yellow Medicine. The Indians said to Superintendent Cullen and Major Sherman, “We want you to punish Inkpadoota; we can’t do it.” But they were told that the Great Father required them to do it, as a condition of receiving their annuities. In the meantime, several hundred Yanktonais Sioux came over from the James River, who had complaints of their own against the government. One day there was a grand council in progress, just outside of Major Sherman’s camp. The Dakota who stabbed the white soldier managed to get his manacles partly off, and ran for the council. The guard fired, and wounded him in the feet and ankles, some shots passing into the council circle. From the Indian side guns were fired, and the white people fled to the soldiers’ camp, the Dakota prisoner being taken into the keeping of his friends.

For a while it was uncertain whether we were to have war or peace. The hundreds of Sioux teepees, which covered the prairie between Dr. Williamson’s place and the agency, were suddenly taken down, and the whole camp was in motion. This looked like war. Dr. Williamson asked for a guard of soldiers. The request could not be granted. The doctor and his folks, they said, could come to the soldiers’ camp. But in an hour or two, when the good doctor saw the teepees going up again, a couple of miles off, he was content to remain without a guard—there would not be war just then. The Dakota prisoner could have been reclaimed, but it was thought best to let him go, as the white soldier was getting well.

That evening, when I returned home from the council, I found Aunt Ruth Pettijohn and our children in a state of alarm. Mary had gone down below on a visit. The Sioux camp was all around us, and we were five miles away from the soldiers’ camp. What might take place within a few days we could not tell. It seemed as if the nervous strain would be less if they could go away for awhile. And so the next morning we put our house in the charge of Simon, and we all started down to the Lower Sioux Agency. We had no settled plan, and when we learned that matters were being arranged, we were at once ready to return, having met Mary with a company of friends, who were on their way up to the mission. Alfred was coming home to spend his vacation, and had brought with him a college friend; and Mrs. Wilson, a sister of Dr. Williamson, and her daughter, Sophronia, and Miss Maggie Voris were come to make a visit.

When we reached home, the Yanktonais had departed, and Little Crow, with a hundred Dakota braves, was starting out to seek Inkpadoota and his band. They came upon them by a lake, and the attack was reported as made in the night, in the reeds and water. Afterward, when in Washington, Little Crow claimed to have killed a dozen or more, but the claim was regarded by the Indians as untrue. The campaign being over, the Indians returned and received their annuities, and thus was the Spirit Lake affair passed over. There was no sufficient punishment inflicted. There was no fear of the white soldiers imparted; perhaps rather a contempt for the power of the government was the result in the minds of White Lodge and other sympathizers with Inkpadoota. And even Little Crow and the Lower Sioux were educated thereby for the outbreak of five years later.

Isabella Burgess had been two years in the Western Female Seminary, at Oxford, Ohio, and Alfred Longley was completing his academical course at Knox College. Isabella came to see him graduate, and then together they started for their Indian home in Minnesota. It was about the first of July, 1858, and at midnight, when the steamboat on which they were traveling, having landed at Red Wing and discharged some freight, and pushed out again into the river, was found to be on fire. The alarm was given, and the passengers waked up, and the boat immediately turned again to the landing; but the fire, having caught in some cotton bales on the front deck, spread so rapidly that it was with difficulty the passengers made their escape, the greater part of them only in their night-dress. Their baggage was all lost. But the good people of Red Wing cared for the sufferers, and started them homeward, with such clothing as could be furnished. Of the catastrophe we knew nothing, until I met the children at St. Peter, whither they came by steamboat. This, and what had gone before, gave us something of a reputation of being a fiery family, and the impression was increased somewhat when, nearly two years later, Martha Taylor, in her second year at Oxford, escaped by night from the burning Seminary building.

After Alfred’s return, in the summer of 1858, he spent a year at Hazelwood, in teaching a government school, and then joined the Theological Seminary at Chicago. In the summer of 1860, the absent ones were all at home. During the six years we had been at Hazelwood, two other children had been given us, Robert Baird and Mary Cornelia Octavia, which made a very respectable little flock of eight.

Twenty-five years had passed since Dr. Williamson came to the Dakotas. Many changes had taken place. It was fitting that the two families which remained should, in some proper way, put up a quarter-century milestone. And so we arranged an out-door gathering, at which we had food for the body and food for the mind. Among other papers read at this time was one which I prepared with some care, giving a short biographical sketch of all the persons who up to that time had been connected with the Dakota mission; a copy of which was afterward placed in the library of the Historical Society of Minnesota.

Ever since the removal of the Lower Indians up to their reservation, there had been several members of Dr. Williamson’s church at Kaposia, living near the Red Wood Agency. They would form a very good nucleus of a church, and make a good beginning for a new station. This had been in our thought for several years, but only when, in 1861, John P. Williamson finished his theological studies at Lane Seminary, had we the ability to take possession of that part of the field. While we waited, Bishop Whipple came up and opened a mission, placing there S. D. Hinman. Still, it was thought advisable to carry out our original plan, and, accordingly, young Mr. Williamson took up his abode there, organized a church of ten or twelve members, and proceeded to erect a chapel. In the last days of the year 1861, I went down, by invitation, to assist in the dedication of the new church.

That journey, both going and returning, was my sorest experience of winter travel, but it helped to start forward this new church organization, which was commencing very auspiciously. Mr. Williamson had his arrangements all made to erect a dwelling-house early in the next season. And when the outbreak took place in August, 1862, as Providence would have it, he had gone to Ohio, as we all supposed, to consummate an engagement which he had made while in the seminary.