Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/480



full particulars of her sad fate. At Hampton she found her sister, Eliza, who made her escape from the Springfield massacre. In 1885 Abbie Gardner Sharp wrote and published a full history of the massacre and her captivity, from which many of the facts here given were procured.

In all the narratives of Indian wars and barbarities that, for more than two hundred years, have marked the advance of civilization across the American continent, there are no pages in the bloody record more thrilling or pathetic than those recording the horrors which exterminated the first colony planted on the shores of Okoboji and Spirit Lakes. Of all the horrors endured by white women in Indian captivity, none have surpassed those of Elizabeth Thatcher, Lydia Noble, Abbie Gardner and Margaret A. Marble.

A son of Si-dom-i-na-do-tah (who was murdered with his family by Henry Lott, the desperado) saved the lives of one family. John B. Skinner, who had settled at the lakes, often befriended this boy, Josh, who was badly wounded at the time his father and family were massacred by Lott and his son. The boy recovered and at times found a home at Skinner’s. When his uncle, Ink-pa-du-tah, planned his raid for a terrible vengeance on the whites, Josh learned that the blow was to fall on the innocent, isolated colony at the lakes. He warned Skinner of danger, and so impressed it upon him, that Mr. Skinner moved back to Liberty and escaped the fate which befell his neighbors. Whether Mr. Skinner warned any others of the danger is not known. Josh also warned Mr. Carter, of Emmet County, of the impending massacre, and spent a part of the winter in Kossuth County. He was seen and recognized by Mrs. J. B. Thomas as one of the leaders in the attack upon their house at Springfield. He was undoubtedly engaged in the massacre at the lakes.

In 1862 Josh was one of the most active in the terrible Minnesota massacres, leading a band at Lake Shetek, which exterminated nearly the entire settlement. Thus