The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-16

ing her babe, and finally crawled out and hid in hollow log, whence she was rescued the following day by her hus- band and party of white men from neighboring settlement, Mrs, Olderdice was soon overtaken by the sayages and her three boys shot down, while she and the baby were dragged off captives, That night in the Indian camp 8 chief took the poor woman to his tent and choked her babe to death. This chief was Whirlwind himself, and the captive woman remained his slave for a long time, The party of men who rescued Mrs, Kline the next day after the mas sacre found one of the Olderdice boys still alive, with an arrow sticking In his side. The arrow head was extracted a few hours later by a man possessing some surgical skill, and the boy Is still alive, being the only survivor of that bloody raid.
 During the same night that Mrs,
 Olderdlce was captured a small party
 of the Indians went off to the east and
 killed two boys named Schmutz and captured woman named Wetzell.
 This woman and Mrs. Olderdice were
 kept in the same camp of Whirlwind
 for several months and then traded off
 to some Indians who carried them off to
 the Platte, and when General Carr de-
 feated them in battle the following sum
 mer, according to their custom, the h.
 dians shot the two women, rather than
 see them retaken by the whites. Mrs.
 Olderdice was instantly killed, but the
 bullet intended to kill Mrs. Wetzell
 glanced on her skull and only stunned
 her, so that she recovered, and, to add
 to the romance, married the soldier who
 picked her up for dead and discovered
 signs of life.
 These bloody raids were continued by
 Whirlwind and Black Kettle through
 out the summer, and many were the
 settlers who lost their lives or had their
 houses and other buildings burned and
 their farms devastated by the willy red
 devils, who became so bold that when
 General Custer was sent to command
 the Seventh cavalry, near Fort Hays in
 the fall, the Indians would ride within shooting distance of the soldiers nearly
 every day, firing many stray shots into
 the camp, and again killing or captur- ing stragglers. General Custer at once got his men into fighting trim, and gave
 the rowing bands many long chases, but could not come up with them, for, we'll mounted on their swift ponies, they would always escape into the Cherokee Strip.
 Throughout the entire season the In- dians had kept up their depredations, unmolested by the army, which, under command of General Sully, managed to keep well out of the way of the reds, and finally when they did follow a band into the territory, were repulsed by Whirlwind and his allies in battle fought near the present site of Camp Supply, and driven in precipitate haste nearly across Kansas to Fort Hayes. It was late in September when Gene
 ral Sheridan put Custer in command
 with orders to- begin an aggressive cam
 paign at once. and keep it up until the
 Indians were either annihilated or driv- en from the country, paying no atten- ton to the Indian bureau, which was
 constantly feeding and arming the In-
 dians, while they were killing the set
 tiers and fighting the army. After a
 month spent in getting his troops in or
 der Custer moved swiftly down the Ar
 kansas, defeated the Indians In several skirmishes and drove the rowing bands into the territory, where they gathered and prepared to go into winter quarters. Then it was that Sheridan and Custer decided on a new move in army circles "a winter campaign against the Indi- ans in their own country. Accordingly, a large body of troops were massed on
 the Arkansas, and on November 18th began their march toward the territory, with Fort Dodge, Kan, as their nearest supply point. 0ne hundred miles due south from Fort Dodge, a the iuncture of two streams that formed the North Canadian, they established a supply station, still known as Camp Supply, and which had been an important army post from that time until the present year, when it was abandoned by order of the War Department.
 The troops remained in camp at Fort 1 Supply six days, with General Sheridan 1 himself present to direct the plan of op- erations, and on the morning of Novem- fber 22d under command of General Gus \ ter, and guided by California Joe and a | l they cut loose and started off toward l the south, with instruction to find the Indian villages, and, if possible, to an l nihilate the Indians. The night before I the start it began showing, and at day break the troops were compelled tc start off in over one foot of snow. The storm kept up all that day and night making the snow nearly two feet on a level, the greatest fall of snow ever
 known in the territory Fifteen miles were all they could travel that day, and | the direction was kept mostly by guess work as in the severe storm even the l Indian scouts lost their bearings. That night they camped on Wolfe Creek, and for three days following travelled up its valley in a southwesterly direction, un. | til they had arrived within a. few miles | of the Texas line. The third night they
 camped near the present town of Shat | tuck, and the next morning started of due south, camping that night on the north bank of the Canadian, opposite Antelope Hills. Crossing the Canadian
 in snow and floating ice the next morn ing, they started on south toward tht
 Washita, on a days journey, never te
 be forgotten by any one of the eight hundred troopers in the command. scouting detachment of cavalry, under l Major Elliot soon discovered the trai of a large war party of Indians in the ! snow and all started in pursuit nov.