engagement. All those attached to the fort or agency were
directed not to pass beyond the picketing. Thompson slept inside the
defenses and passed the greater part of the day at the agency, about
one hundred yards beyond the works. The sutler, Rogers, had moved his
goods into the fort, but was in the habit of taking his meals at his
residence, six hundred yards away in the skirt of a hammock to the
southwest of the fort.

On the day of the massacre Lieutenant Constantine Smith, of the Second
Artillery, had dined with General Thompson, and after dinner the two
went out for a walk. They had proceeded about three hundred yards
beyond the agency office when they were fired upon by a party of
Indians who were concealed in the hammock on the border of which the
sutler's house stood. The reports of the rifles, and the war-whoop
repeated, were heard within a brief time, other volleys more remote
were fired, when the smoke of the firing was seen at the fort. Captain
Lendrum at once called out his men, who were at that time engaged in
strengthening the pickets. He was not aware of the absence from the
fort of General Thompson and Lieutenant Smith; he supposed the firing
was a ruse to draw him out and cut him off from the fort. Very soon
several whites and negroes came in and informed him that Mr. Rogers,
his clerks, and themselves had been surprised at dinner, and the three
former had fallen into the hands of the Indians. A small command was
at once dispatched to succor and pursue, but the butchery had been as
brief as it was complete, and a last war-whoop had been given as a
signal for retreat. The bodies of General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith,
and Mr. Kitzler were soon found and brought in; those of the others
were not found until the following morning. General Thompson's body
had fourteen bullets in it and a deep knife-wound in the left breast.
Lieutenant Smith and Mr. Kitzler had each received two bullets in the
head. The bodies of Rogers the sutler and Robert Suggs were
shockingly mangled, the skulls of each being broken, and all save
Suggs were scalped. The party was led by Assiola, and consisted of
fifty or sixty Micosukees. Two other Indians were in the party attired
as chiefs, but were not recognized. This information comes from an old
negro woman who was in the house and who concealed herself so as to
elude the Indians, and made her escape to the fort after the massacre.

Information of the butchery was at once dispatc