Connecticut western news., 1884-10-15
THE RED WOOD MASSACRE
TERRIBLE SCENES OF FRONTIER
 BARBARIrIEs RECALLED.
Lbhn Banvard's Description Of a CeIe-
 brRted Ipdian Tragedy.

I am now in the famous Red Wood | ~egion, where the terrible Indian mas Eacre took place a few years since, and A-u quartered with family by the name of Webster, who passed through the terrible scenes of those trying times wlen the bloody Sioux made their foray and murdered hundreds of innocent wo- men and children after they had shot theSr husbands and fathers defending the m The Sioux barbarities were of SUI sh horrid character that the finer fe slings of the female Christian heart h gre is completely blurred and unfor- tying toward Indians when these hide ous atrocities come up in conversation. f And many say that the ''only good h. dian is a dead one" now believe, in common with all the people of the iron tier, that the government policy with them is all wrong.
 Without exception the men and wo- men here who saw and experienced their deyilish works in that fiendish massacre say that every one of the captured should have been hung, and, what has been told me of them, say hanging simply was too good death for them. I have read of and seen some of their terrible atrocities, but the one told me which I now relate is beyond anything ever read of or heard of. On the frontier, in the neighborhood of Yellow Medicine, there was the happy home of settler by the name of Schwandt, consisting of his wife, several children, and young girl of seventeen years, relation on a visit to them. One of the girls was re- gently married and on the point of be- coming a mother. This family had been ever kind to the Indians when they wis., tied the neighborhood, always gave them food and frequently lodged them in stormy weather.
 This house was one of the first at- tackled by the fiends, who shot and toma- hawked all except the young girl whose life was preserved for the baser passions of these devils incarnate. One of the boys, who was wounded by the first fire of the Indians, succeeded in crawling to hiding place in sight of the house. He saw his mother, brothers and sisters barbarously slaughtered. His married sister, almost in the bangs of maternity, he saw dragged out of the cabin to tree and tortured by the Indians. They made wooden pins with their scalping knives, ripped open the body of the unfortunate woman and took out the liv ing infant and crucified it alive against the tree in sight of its still breathing mother (driv- ing the pins through it's hands and feet), and there left her to die gazing on the agonizing writhings of her infant, and there the bodies were found by the "burial party" sent out by Colonel Sib- ley, the dead mother with her lifeless eyes gazing at her crucihed child.
 No wonder then that the people here hate Indians, especially as the Govern ment only hung thiIty-eight of the mur- derers, when after the outbreak was subdued 400 of the fiends were identified by escaped settlers. This 400 were tried by the local tribunals and military com mission and all sentenced to de ath. But the peaceful Quakers of Ph iladelphia in- terfered and petitioned the President, who ordered only one in ten to be hung, when the whole tribe, in fact, should have been executed, and of these only thirty.eight found their way to the scaf- fold, one escaping and another dying.
 The other day I witnessed & "oorn dance" of band of these Sioux, and an old Indian fighter pointed me out sev- eral of the rascals who should have then been hung, but are now receiving an- nuities from our merciful Government. Mrs. Webster, the lady with whom I am now stopping, says she identih ed an old Indian-whom she well knew, hay ing often fed and lodged him-by the name of Shaa-dee, who had killed a number of white women, or as he said in the Sioux language, "me nero"- white squaw. He was one of those sen- tenced to be executed.
 have seen many of the various tribes of British-American Indians, but more villainous-looking set never saw than the "Warpenton Sioux" Looking into some of their "teepees" recently on the Dakota prairies, studied their physiog- monies. Murder was in their faces, and they need only an opportunity, when they would again gladly redden their scalping knives with the blood of inno- cent women and children.
 J. HAYWARD.