A Thrilling Narrative of the Minnesota Massacre and the Sioux War of 1862-63: Graphic Accounts of the Siege of Fort Ridgely, Battles of Birch Coolie, Wood Lake, Big Mound, Stony Lake, Dead Buffalo Lake and Missouri RiverConnolly, A. P. (Alonzo P.)
History
A Thrilling Narrative of the Minnesota Massacre and the Sioux War of 1862-63: Graphic Accounts of the Siege of Fort Ridgely, Battles of Birch Coolie, Wood Lake, Big Mound, Stony Lake, Dead Buffalo Lake and Missouri River
Connolly, A. P. (Alonzo P.)
Dakota Indians -- Wars -- 1862-1865
When he was satisfied that his father was dead he started off he knew not
where. He was a fugitive, a miserable creature, bereft of home, country
and parents--a human being without a country, but with a soul--in a land
where every hand was raised against him; a fugitive from an enraged white
people because of the sins of his father. He hid by day and travelled by
night until beyond the white settlements. He was captured by a company
of soldiers who were out hunting Indians in the region of Devil's Lake,
Dakota. When captured he was in a starving condition and glad to get even
among Uncle Sam's soldiers. He was questioned as to his father and where
he had been. He said:
"I am the son of Little Crow; my name is Wo-wi-nap-a, and I am sixteen
years old. Father said he was getting old and wanted me to go with him
to carry his bundles. He left his wives and other children behind. There
were sixteen men and one squaw in the party that went below with us. We
had no horses, but walked all the way down to the settlements. Father and
I were picking red berries near Scattered Lake at the time he was shot.
It was near night. He was hit the first time in the side, just above the
hip. His gun and mine were lying on the ground. He took up my gun and
fired it first, and then fired his own. He was shot the second time while
firing his own gun. The ball struck the stock of the gun and then hit him
in the side near the shoulder. This was the shot that killed him. He told
me that he was killed and asked me for water, which I gave him. He died
immediately after. When I heard the first shot fired I laid down and the
man did not see me before father was killed.
"A short time before father was killed an Indian named Hi-a-ka, who
married the daughter of my father's second wife, came to him. He had a
horse with him, also a gray-colored blanket that he had taken from a man
whom he had killed, to the north of where father was killed. He gave the
coat to my father, telling him that he would need it when it rained, as
he had no coat with him. Hi-a-ka said he had a horse now and was going
north. He further said that the Indians who went down with them had
separated, and he had not seen them since."
After the death of his father Young Crow took both guns and started for
Devil's Lake. He had no ammunition, but found a cartridge and cut it into
slugs. With this he shot a wolf and ate some of it. His strength gave
out, and twenty-six days after his father was killed he was captured.
The old chief was a great wooer of the fair sex, for his son said of him:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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