The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-01-27
ANACONDA NEWS.
WAS A MONTANA GIRL
Captured by the Sioux When a
Mere Child.
NEAR THE BOUNDARY LINE
Her Parents Were Slaughtered and She
Was Brought Up by Her Savage
Captors-The Story of Her
Life Among the Indians.

Life Among the Indians
The New York Journal of a recent
date gives the following account of a
white girl brought up by the Sioux,
who killed her parents somewhere near
the international boundary:
For Is years Swift Fawn was a. Sioux
Indian girl. She pounded maize and
gathered acorns, helped dress hides,
drew rations from the reservation.
She gathered firewood to keep warm
the wickyup of Slow Deer. whom she
called father, and cook his food and
she stood the beatings of Quiet Water,
whom she called mother. when she
spoiled the beadwork on buckskin
moccasins entrusted to her for decora-
ton, or when she was slow with her
chores around the Indian village.
She streaked her face with paint, w ore
buckskin clothes and a blanket and
dressed her hair with rabbit skin tas-
sells. For finery she had beads and
strings of tin cut from cans thrown
away by the soldiers.
She was spoken for in marriage by
Black Dog of the Sioux, and looked for
ward to doing the drudgery of this stall
wart lazy buck without any idea that
such a destiny was in the least out of
the ordinary.
Now she is not even Swift Fawn any
more, but Miss Annie Russell, a white
girl, and two great governments are
trying to find who her real parents
Were. for Slow Deer and Quiet Water
lied when they told her she was their
daughter. She no longer wears her hair
in braids down her back with a fringe
covering her forehead to her eyes. She
wears a shirt waist and skirt made to
fit her and she is learning the language
and customs of her own people at an
orphanage in Sioux Falls.
The Sioux have reluctantly yielded
the secret of the white girls presence
among them. A secret they kept well
from her during all the years she wan
dered with them nomdd, a savage,
like themselves. She was one of them
when they murdered and burned, and
she saw the men of her tribe kill white
men and women, and destroy peaceful
farms without shock or qualm, for from
her Indian point of view it was all
right and at the time Swift Fawn's
only interest in the numbering, like that
OF the other girls of the band, was
merely on the question of whether she
would get any of the gimcracks from
the looted ranch houses, with which to
deck herself
She did not realize that she was wit
Messing just such a circumstance 81
changed her from an American balV
into an Indian child.
Fifteen years ago Sitting Bull was
out on raid with his devils The raid
extended through Montana and up into
Manitoba. The raid ended, as such
raids always ended, in the return of the
hostiles after defeat by the soldiers of
the reservation.
Among the victims of this raid were
Andrew Russell and his wife, who had
settled on ranch somewhere on one
side or the other of the boundary be-
tween the United States and Manitoba
The name of Russell is on a silver
drinking mug and handkerchief part
of the proceeds of this raid, as the In
dams have confessed. To the Sioux the
slaughter of the Russells was only an
incident, and possibly they are truthful
in saying they do not remember exactly
where the event took place. AS they tell
it the band Swooped down on a lonely
ranch house in the foot hills at day
break one morning. The man was shot
as he issued from the house, and the
raiders then rushed in and tomahawked
the woman.
A little girl, two or three years old,
they spared, because she was so pretty
with her big blue eyes and wavy golden
hair. There were no squaws along or
the baby would probably have been
tortured to death Instead a warrior
took her in his arms and carried her
with him-much as hunters might carry
value instead of killing it. The man
and woman were scalped, and the house
burned. Sitting Bull made a pet of the
white child and when the war party
returned to the reservation she was
taken along. dressed like an Indian
baby, and part of Sioux family The
band settled on Cherry creek on the
Big Sioux reservation, 112 miles from
the Cheyenne River agency
AS member of the Deer family she
was an aristocrat in the band and a.
resident of the first lodge in the village.
By and by the child grew up The
other little girls used to jeer at her hair.
which was wavy and not straight like
their own. CONTEMPORARY tell her she
was white, but that was common
childhood insult bestowed on almost
any of the young ones who were I'M
popular, and except for this she Jared
as well as any Sioux girl.
She attended the Indian agency
school, but attracted no particular at
tention it being supposed that she was
a half breed.
1t was only when the Indians were
about to marry the girl to Black Dog
that the truth was learned. The credit
of the girls rescue is due to Rev, o. HI.
Sproul who, seeing the girl among the
Indians, charged them with having q
white prisoner and scared them into de-
ferring the ceremony until he got word
to the Indian agent. Senator Kyle be-
came interested in the case and finally
the girl was taken from the Indians
and placed in the school at Sioux Falls,
as a ward of the government.
She is a fairly intelligent girl and in
civilized dress a very handsome one
She does not yet realize the remarkab BILE
change that has occurred in her des-