New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-09-10

/ WOL0er larry 0urI0k0O Will b$Vuys o"N
her head madly against the wall A Few
steps further on sat woman ON doorstep,
rocking herself to and fro, and utterlng
means hesrtrending beyodd anything !
could have imagined. Her head was brrled
| in her hands, while her fingers were IN
consciously twisting and tearing her hair
as she gszed into her lap, where lay three
little skulls with the hair still clinging TO
| them.
And now We begin to approach the
| church and the scho0lbouse. The ground
| is covered here with skeletons to which are
| clinging articles of clothing and bits Of pm
| trid flesh; the air is heavy with faint sick
| ening 0dor, that grows stronger as we ad-
vance. The school is on one side of the
road, the church on the other. Tho school
house, to Judge by the walls that are in part
standing, was fine, large building, capa-
BILE of accommodating two or three hundred
children. Beneath the stones and rubbish
that cover the floor to the height
heighth of several feet are the bones and
aches Of two hundred women and children
burned alive between the four walls. just
beside the scboolhouse is broad, shallow
pit. Here were buried hundred bodies
two weeks after the massacre. But the dogs
uncovered them in part The water flowed in
and now it lies there horrid cessp0ol, with
human remains floating about or lying half
exposed in the mud Near by, on the banks
of the little stream that runs through the
village, is q saw mill. The wheel-pit BE-
meath is full Of dead bodies floating in the
water. The banks of this stream we're at
one time literally covered with cOrpses of
men and women, young girls and children,
that lay there fostering in the sun and eaten
by dOge. We entered the church yard, but
the oder here became go bad that it was al
most impossible to proceed. We take a
handful of tobacco and hold it to cur noses
while We continue our investigations. The
church was not very large one, aEG it was
surrounded by low stone wall. The place
is heaped up with stones and rubbish to
the height of five or six feet above the
level of the street, and upon inspection
We discover that what appeared to be
mass Of stones and rubbish is in reality
an immense heap of human bodies covered
over with thin layer of stones. The
whole of the little churchyard is heaped up
with them to the depth of three or four
feet, AID it is from here that tne fearful
Odor comes. The dogs had been at work
and now could be seen projecting from this
monster grave heads, arms, legs, feet and
hands in hOrrid confusion. We were told
there were 5000 people lying here in this
little chnrchyard alone, and We could well
believe it. It was fearful sight-a sight
to haunt one through lite. There were lit
tie curly heads there in that fostering mass
crushed down by heavy stones; little feet
not as long az your finger on which the
flesh was dried hard by the ardent heat be.
fore 1t had time to decompose; little baby
hands stretched out as if for help; babes
that had died wondering at the bright
CLEAN OF sabres and the red hands of The
herceeyed men who welded them; children
who had died shrinking with fright and
terror; young girls who had died weeping
and soboing and begging for mercy; moth
ers who died trying to shield their little
ones with their own weak bodies and lying
there together, fostering in one horrid mass
We talked to many of the people. How
many were in your fa9ily!" we would ask.
Ten" len, the answer would be. perhaps.
manv in yours" Eight" How many
remain" Three" "How many in yoursl"
Fifteen" How many remain" Give"
And so on in families Numbering from FIVE
to twenty, in which only remained from
one TO five persons. One old woman said
she had three sons, all married. They bad
between them twelve children, SO that the |
family counted all told nineteen persons.
OF all there remained only this poor old |
grandmother. There was an old man who |
told US of his uncle, Blagoi Christosotf. a |
venerable patriarch of the grand old type. |
He had i've sons married, who bad among |
them twenty -seveu children, thus maxim. |
q family that with the wives counted up a |
sum total of thirty-nine persons living I'M |
der the same roof. OF this enormous |
family there are only eight left.
We asked about the skulls and bones we
had seen up on the hill upon first arriving
in the village where the dogs had barked |
at us. These, We we're told. were the bones
OF about 200 young girls, who had first been
captured ana reserved tor a worse fate than
death. They had been kept till the last;
they had been in the hands of their captors
for several days-for the burning and the
pillaging had not all been complished in
a single day-and during this time they had
suffered all it was possible that poor, weak,
girls could suffer at the hands of
brutal savages. Then when the town had
been pillaged and burned, when all their
friends had been slaughtered, these poor
Young things, whose very wrongs should
nave insured them safety, whose very out
ages should have Insured them protection,
we're taken in the broad light of day, be
heath the smiling canopy of heaven, ooolly
'eheaded. then thrown in q heap there and
eft to rot.