Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/131

 HISTORY OF GOODHTJE COUNTI 93 and plains of this county, which was once, and for countless generations, a camping and hunting ground of the red men. Any account of the relations between the Indians and Good- hue county whites would be incomplete without mention of the Spirit Lake massacre. The Sioux of Red Wing's village used to I mast that although they had killed the Chippewas whenever they had found any, they nor any of their tribe had ever killed a white person. But this was in 1850 that they so proudly made their boast of their peaceable inclination toward the wmites. In the spring of 1856 Red Wing enterprise fitted out a company of men consisting of G. W. Granger, Barton Snyder and Isaac Harriett, and sent them down to Spirit lake to select land claims and found a town. In the fall of 1856 there were seven cabins around the lake, all of which were occupied. The occupants were a man named Thatcher and family. Marble and family, Judge Howe and family, Mattox and family, and Isaac Harriett, Barton Snyder and G. W. Granger, the three last named occupy- ing one cabin and keeping ■"bachelor's hall." For some years previous to this, a few Dakota Indians and outlaws, under the lead of an excommunicated Dakota Indian named Inkpadootah, had been roving through that part of Iowa. They had been driven away from their own people and were a band unto themselves — insolent, devilish, murderous wretches; and on Sunday. March 8, 1856, they came to Spirit Lake, and almost immediately commenced their hellish work. Mr. Neill says they proceeded to a cabin occupied only by men. and asked for beef. L T nderstanding. as they afterward asserted, that they received permission to kill one of the cattle, they did so. and com- menced cutting it up. when one of the white men went out and knocked the Dakota down. In retaliation the white man was shot and killed, and, surrounding the house, the Indians set fire to the thatched roof and killed the occupants as they attempted to escape from the burning building — eleven in all. Other authorities say there was no beef demanded by the Indians, no beef killed, and that Inkpadootah w T as not assaulted hy any of the white men, but that the attack was instigated solely and simply by Indian treachery and thirst for blood. This ver- sion of the affair is maintained by Isaac Lauver, W. W. DeKay, George Huntington and a Mr. Patten, who went down to Spirit Lake from Red "Wing about the 31st of March, as soon as they beard of the massacre, to bury the remains of the murdered victims and look after the claim interests. At about the same time the murdering wretches went to a cabin occupied by a man named Gardner and his family, and asked for something to eat. Everything in the house was given them. While they were disposing of Gardner's hospitality, his