The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1894-12-14

TO a summer house, called the assem-
bly, rooms, which had been built for
recreation and pleasure. 1t had two
rooms each 29xl0, and some window
less closets, and here were imprisoned
FOG helpless people. 1t was to become
the prison ofthese women and children.
Some of these Sepoys got permission
of Mana Sahib to take one or more of
these ladies to their own place, on the
promise they should be brought back
to the summer garden next morning.
A daughter of Gen. Wheeler was SO
taken and did not return. She after
ward married the Mohammedan who
had taken her to his tent. Some Sc
poys amused themselves by thrusting
children through with bayonets and
holding them up before their mothers
in the summer house. All the doors
closed and the Sepoys standing guard,
the crowded women and children
waited their doom for eighteen days
and nights amid sickness, and flies, and
stencil, and starvation.
Then Mana Sahib heard that Have
lOCh was CollllbS. III lllS udulc was IL
terror to the Sepoys. Lest the women
and children imprisoned in the sum-
mer house or assembly rooms should
be liberated, he ordered that their
threats should be cut. The officers
were commanded to do the work, and
attempted it, but failed because the
law of caste would not allow the Hin
doc to hold the victims while they
were being slain. Then 100 men were
ordered to fire through the windows,
but they fired over the heads of the
imprisoned ones, and only a few were
killed. Then Mana Sahib was in a
rage, and ordered professional butch
ers from among the lowest of the gyp-
sizes to go at the work. Five of them
with hatchets and swords and knives
began the work, but three of them col
lapsed and tainted under the ghast-
illness, and it was left to two butchers
to complete the slaughter. The
struggle, the sharp cut, the binding
blow, the cleaving through scalp and
scull. the begging for life, the death
agony of hour after hour, the tangled
limbs of the corpses, the piled up dead
only God and those who were in
side the summer house car ever know.
The butchers came out exhausted,
thinking they had done their work.
and the doors were closed. But when
they were again opened, three women
and three boys were still alive. All
these were soon dispatched, and not a
Christian or a European was left in
Cawnpore. The murderers were paid
fifty cents for each lady slain. The
Mohammedan ~assassins dragged by the
hair the dead bodies out of the summer
house and threw them into a well, by
which I stood with such feelings as you
can not imagine, But after the mutt
lated bodies had been thrown into the
well, the record of the scene remained
in hieroglyphics of crimson on the floor
and wall of the slaughter house. An
eye witness says that, as he walked in,
the blood was shoe deep, and on this
blood were tufts of hair, pieces of mus
lin, broken combs, fragments of pima
fores, children's straw hats, a card
case containing a curl with the inscrip-
tion, "Ned's hair, with love- a few
leaves of an Episcopal prayer book;
also a book entitled, preparation for
Death;" a Bible, on the fly leaf Of
which was written, For darling
mamma. from her affectionate daugh-
ter, Isabella Blair"-both the one who
presented it and the one to whom it
presented, departed forever.
1t was about 5 o'clock in the even
ing when 1 came upon this place in
%Cawnpore. The building in which the
massacre took place has been torn
down and a garden of exquisite and
fragrant flowers surrounds the scene.
Nh. Lee pointed out to us some seventy
mounds containing bodies or portions
of bodies Of those not thrown into the
well. A soldier stands on guard to
keep the foliage and flowers from be-
ing ruthlessly pulled. 1 asked a sol
der if | might take a rose as a me-
mento, and he handed me a cluster of
roses, red and white, both colors sug-
gestive to me; the red typical of the
carnage there enacted, and the white
for the purity of those who from that
spot assembled.
But, of course. the most absorbing
interest concentrated at the well, into
which hundreds of women and chill
dren were flung or lowered. A circu-
lar wall of white marble encloses this
we'll. The wall is about twenty feet
high. Inside this wall there is a marble
pavement. | paced it, and found it
hfty-seven PAGES around. In the
center of this enclosure, and immedi-
ately above the well of the dead. is a
sculptured angel of resurrection, with
illumined face, and two palm branches.
meaning victory. This angel is look
ing, down toward the slumberers be-
meath, but the two wings suggest the
OF the last day. Mighty conso-
lation in marble. They went down
under the hatchets of the Sepoys:
they shall come up under the trumpet
that shall wake the dead. | felt weak
and all a-tremble as l stood reading
these words on the stone that covers
the we'll: Sacred to the perpetual
memory of a great company of Christian
people, chiefly women and children.
cruelty massacred near this spot by