Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/432



Sioux chose to perpetrate. Resistance would have brought certain death.

As the Indians advanced their depredations began to assume a savage character. At Gillett’s Grove ten armed warriors forced an entrance into a house occupied by two families, seized the women and girls and subjected them to horrible outrages. They destroyed the furniture and beds, killed the cattle and hogs and robbed the terrified families of every article they took fancy to. Near midnight the settlers fled through the deep snow wandering for thirty-six hours, thinly clad, until they reached the house of Abner Bell, the nearest neighbor, utterly exhausted and nearly frozen to death. The Indians went from cabin to cabin, perpetrating outrages too horrible to relate, carrying off some of the girls to their camps where they were held until the savages moved on. Up to this time, however, no one had been killed.

As soon as the Indians moved on toward the lakes, Abner Bell, Mr. Weaver and Mr. Wilcox made their way through the deep snow to Fort Dodge, seventy miles distant. Their story of the Indian outrages created great indignation and excitement, as all realized that the frontier settlements were in imminent danger. But several days elapsed, no one knew where the Indians had gone; the snow was so deep that there was no hope that they could be overtaken by the time an organized force could be fitted out to pursue them.