Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul by Frank Moore
page 38 of 148 (25%)
page 38 of 148 (25%)
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pulseless and bleeding breast; rape joined to murder in one awful
tragedy; young girls, even children of tender years, outraged by these brutal ravishers till death ended their shame; women held into captivity to undergo the horrors of a living death; whole families burned alive; and, as if their devilish fancy could not glut itself with outrages on the living, the last efforts exhausted in mutilating the bodies of the dead. Such are the spectacles, and a thousand nameless horrors besides which this first experience of Indian warfare has burned into the minds and hearts of our frontier people; and such the enemy with whom we have to deal." * * * * * The old saying that the only good Indians are dead ones had a noble exception in the person of Other Day, who piloted sixty-two men, women and children across the country from below Yellow Medicine to Kandiyohi, and from there to Hutchinson, Glencoe and Carver. Other Day was an educated Indian and had been rather wild in his younger days, but experienced a change of heart about four years before the outbreak and had adopted the habits of civilization. Other Day arrived in St. Paul a few days after he had piloted his party in safety to Carver, and in the course of a few remarks to a large audience at Ingersoll hall, which had assembled for the purpose of organizing a company of home guards, he said: "I am a Dakota Indian, born and reared in the midst of evil. I grew up without the knowledge of any good thing. I have been instructed by Americans and taught to read and write. This I found to be good. I became acquainted with the Sacred Writings, and thus learned my vileness. At the present time I have fallen into great evil and affliction, but have escaped from it, and with sixty-two men, women and children, without moccasins, without food and without a |
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