thing but find fault with everything any
one else did.

Men and women spoke with stiffened lips and blanched faces. Families in
the outskirts gathered to more central places, and there were forty-two
women and children in my house the night after the troops left, and for
every night for weeks. We kept large kettles of boiling water as one
means of defense. I always had the watchword, and often at midnight I
would go out to see that the pickets were on duty, and report to the
women that all was well. Brother Harry was appointed General of State
troops, succeeding Gen. Lowrie, and arms were sent to him for
distribution, while women kept muskets by them and practiced daily. The
office of my democratic contemporary was closed, and he fled to New
England, while his assistant went with my only male assistant to rescue
settlers. I had two young ladies in the office, one a graduate of a New
York high school, and through all the excitement they kept at work as
coolly as at any other time. We got out the paper regularly, and
published many extras.

The history of the horrors and heroisms which reached us during the six
weeks in which Ft. Abercrombie held out until relief came, would make a
volume, and cannot he written here. The unimaginable tortures and
indecencies inflicted on brave men and good women, are something for
which the Christian supporters and excusers of the Sioux must yet
account at the bar where sentimental sympathy with criminals is itself
a crime; and where the wail of tortured infants will not be hushed by
reckoning of bad beef and a deficiency in beans.

While the Sioux sat in council to determine that butchery, some
objected, on the ground that such crimes would be punished, but Little
Crow, leader of the war party, quieted their fears by saying:

"White man no like Indian! Indian catch white man, roast him, kill him!
White man catch Indian, feed him, give him blankets," and on this
assurance they acted.

One thing was clearly proven by that outbreak, viz.: that services to,
and friendship for, Indians, are the best means of incurring their
revenge. Those families who had been on most intimate terms with them,
were those who were massacred first and with the greatest atrocities.
The more frequently they had eaten salt with a pale-face, the more
insatiable was their desire for vengeance. The missionaries were
generally spared, as the source through which they expected pardon and
supplies. The Indian was