Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/446



Luce and Clark, who started from the Gardner house to warn the settlers, went toward Mr. Howe’s. They were overtaken near the outlet on the south shore of East Okoboji, by the stealthy savages, shot down and scalped. This closed the first day’s horrid work, the 8th day of March, 1857. That night the Sioux warriors celebrated the butchery of twenty men, women and children in the true Indian fashion, with blackened faces, keeping time in their war dance to the beating of drums, circling over the bloodstained snow with unearthly yells among the mutilated bodies of their victims, until exhausted by their horrid orgies. Crouched in an Indian tepee, Abbie Gardner, the only survivor of the first day’s massacre, prostrated by grief and terror and the awful deeds she had been compelled to witness, endured such anguish as seldom falls to the lot of a human being.

While this awful butchery was going on, the neighbors on the east side of the lakes had no warning of their impending danger. Luce and Clark were lying dead on the south shore. Mr. Howe had started early in the morning of the 9th, wading through the deep snow drifts toward the Gardner cabin to borrow flour. He was met by the Indians who were going to his house to continue their work. They shot him, then severed his head from the body and hurried on to his cabin. Mrs. Howe, her son Jonathan, his sister Sardis and three young brothers, all unsuspicious of danger, were in the house. Suddenly the door was burst open, a wild rush of yelling Indians with gleaming tomahawks and scalping knives filled the house, and a few moments later, amid screams of terror and groans of anguish, the dead and dying bodies of the entire family were lying in the blood-stained snow. Going on to the Thatcher cabin, the Indians found Mr. Noble, his wife and child, Mrs. Thatcher and her child and Mr. Ryan. Seeing two stalwart young men at home, the cowardly savages professed friendship as they entered the house. When Noble and Ryan were thus deceived, the Indians