News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-11-06
THE RED WOOD MASSACRE
TERRIBLE SCENES OF FRONTIER
BARBARITIES RECALLED.
John Bnnvard's Description of a Cele-
brated Indian Tragedy.

| brated Indian Tragedy.
1 am now in the famous Red Wood
region, where the terrible Indian mas
hacre took place few years since, and
am quartered with family by the name
of Webster, who passed through the
terrible scenes of those trying times
when the bloody Sioux made their foray
and murdered hundreds of innocent wo-
men and children after they had shot
their husbands and fathers defending
them. The Sioux barbarities were Of
such horrid character that the finer
feelings of the female Christian heart
here is completely blurred and unfor-
giving toward Indians when these hide
GUS atrocities come up in conversation.
And many say that the ''only good In
dian is a dead one" 1 now believe, in
common with all the people of the from
tier, that the government policy with
them is all wrong.
Without exception the men and wo-
men here who saw and experienced their
devilish works in that fendish massacre
say that every one of the captured should
have been hung, and, what has been
told me of them, I say hanging simply
was too good death for them. / have
read of and seen some Of their terrible
atrocities, but the one told me which I
now relate is beyond anything 1 ever
read of or heard of. On the frontier, in
the neighborhood of Yellow Medicine,
there was the happy home of a settler
by the name of Schwandt, consisting of
his wife, several children, and a young
girl of seventeen years, relation on
visit to them. One of the girls was re-
Gently married and on the point of be-
coming 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
a hiding place in sight of the house.
He saw his mother, brothers and sisters
barbarously slaughtered. His married
sister, almost in the pangs of maternity,
he saw dragged out of the cabin to a 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
md crucified it alive against the tree in
,ight of its still breathing mother (driv- |
ng the pins through its hands and feet), |
md there left her to die gazing on the |
gonizing writings of her infant, and
here the bodies were found by the
burial party sent out by Colonel Sib-
ey, the dead mother with her lifeless
yes gazing at her crucifed child.
No wonder then that the people here
late Indians, especially as the Govern
nent only hung thirty eight of the muir
lerers, when after the outbreak was
,ubdued 400 of the fiends were identified |
oy escaped settlers. This 400 were tried
oy the local tribunals and military COM
mission and all sentenced to de ath. But |
,he peaceful Quakers of Phi iladelphia in
.erfered and petitioned the President,
who ordered only one in ten to be hung,
when the whole tribe, in fact, should
nave been executed, and of these only
thirty eight found their way to the scaf-
iold, one escaping and another dying.
The other day I witnessed "corn |
lance" of band of these Sioux, and an
Did Indian fighter pointed me out sew
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 |
I'm now stopping, says she identii ed an
Did Indian-whom she well knew, hav-
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
fenced to be executed.
L have seen many of the various tribes
If British-American Indians, but more
Misunderstanding set never saw than
he "Warpenton Sioux" Looking into !
'ome of their "teepees" recently on the
Dakota prairies, studied their physiog-
lomies. Murder was in their faces, and |
hey need only an opportunity, when
hey would again gladly redden their
calping knives with the blood of inno- |
,ent women and children
J. BANvARD.