Page:Van Cise exhibits to the Commision on Industrial Relations regarding Colorado coal miner's strike.djvu/11

Rh Capt. Linderfelt took a woman from one tent who could not speak English, but who made him understand that he must return. She went back with him and indicated one of these holes in the ground, from which the lieutenant took two little children just in the nick of time. He stalked from the colony with these children in his arms.

Capt. Carson relates that when he was in an apparently open floored tent he heard the crying or whining of something living beneath. He had to chop away the floor, which was nailed down upon these people, in order to get them out.

These holes were so constructed as to conceal their presence, and the openings to them were usually hidden by the bed or some article of furniture being placed above them. During the whole time that this rescue work was going forward the colony was under fire from the arroyo, so that not only did the officers and men have to contend with the fire and with the reluctance of the deluded people they were rescuing but were taking the greatest chances of destruction by making targets of themselves in the light of the burning tents.

We find that the work of rescuing these women and children, to the number of some 25 or 30, by Lieut. Linderfelt, Capt. Carson, and the squads at their command, was under all circumstances truly heroic and must stand out boldly in contradistinction to the abandonment of the helpless women and children by their own people and the subsequent efforts to kill their rescuers, regardless of the safety of the rescued.

It was supposed by the officers, after a thorough search of the colony, that all of the remaining women and children had been taken out.

The event proved that one of the pits had been missed in the search. In this pit were subsequently discovered 2 women and 11 children, all dead. This chamber of death measured in feet 8 by 6 by 4 1/2. When found it was almost closed. The quantity of air contained in such a space we found could not have supported the life of these occupants for many hours. Their bodies, when found, bore heartrending evidences of their struggles to get out. If these women and children were placed in this pit at any time during the morning, it is our belief that they died of suffocation hours before the tents caught fire.

Among those taken out of the colony by the rescue parties was a man named Snyder and his family. The man carried in his arms the dead body of his little son.

This boy had been shot in the forehead and was indeed the only person shot in the colony. A story was given wide publicity that this lad was ruthlessly shot down by the soldiers while trying to get a drink of water for his dying mother.

Snyder went to the depot with this dead child in his arms and there in the presence of many civilians and officers related how the boy had gone outside to answer a call of nature and had faced toward the arroyo from which the strikers fire was coming when he was accidentally hit in the forehead by the bullet that caused his death.

It was Snyder who told in this conversation how the Greeks had planned this battle for their Easter, the day before. At that time, whatever he may say now, his resentment was bitter against the Greeks in the colony, whom he blamed for everything that had happened.

A collection was taken up among the officers and the soldiers, amounting to some $18 and given to refugees.

During the' rescuing and afterwards, the tent colony was invaded by the soldiers and mine guards for quite a different purpose. By this time the uniformed guardsmen had been joined by large numbers of men in civilian attire, part of whom were from Troop A and part of them mine guards, all unknown to the uniformed soldiers and their officers and all unused and unamenable to discipline.

By this time, the time of the burning of the tents, the nondescript number of men had passed out of their officers' control, had ceased to be an army and had become a mob. Doubtless all were seeing red on both sides of the conflict.

This may acount for the insane shooting by the strikers during the rescue of their women and children and it may also account for what happened in the tents.

We. find that the tents were not all of them destroyed by accidental fire. Men and soldiers swarmed into the colony and deliberately assisted the conflagration by spreading the fire from tent to tent.

Beyond a doubt, it was seen to, intentionally, that the fire should destroy the whole of the colony. This, too, was accompanied by the usual loot.