One or two Indians drew revolvers or rifles and fired upon the soldiers, who returned the fire, killing almost half the warriors at the first discharge of their guns. Many sticks were afterwards set up at this place by the Indians. The survivors sprang to their feet, seized knives, clubs or the few remaining guns, and fought desperately. While this was going on, other troops operated the Hotchkiss guns and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children standing or running about the tipis. Mooney says “the guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of fifty per minute, mowing down everything alive. “The terrible effect may be judged from the fact that one woman survivor, Blue Whirlwind, with whom the author conversed, received fourteen wounds, while each of her two little boys were also wounded by her side. In a few minutes 200 Indian men, women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground, the tipis had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic to the shelter of the ravine, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers and followed up by a raking fire from the Hotchkiss guns, which had been moved into position to sweep the ravine. “There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. On this point such a careful writer as Herbert Welsh says: ‘From the fact that so many women and children were killed, and that their bodies were found far from the scene of action, and as though they were shot down while flying, it would look as though blind rage had been at work, in striking contrast to the moderation of the Indian police at the Sitting Bull fight when they were assailed by women.’ The testimony of American Horse and other friendlies is strong in the same direction. Commissioner Morgan in his official report says that ‘Most of the men, including Big Foot, were killed around his tent, where he lay sick. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter’.” I agree with Mooney, that a man should not criticize the soldiers of his own country. As for the shooting of armed warriors, we will all give assent. As to the murder of women and children, whose only thought was to escape with their lives, one may not trust himself to write in moderation. The Indians told me that many of the Seventh Cavalry troops cried out, “Remember Custer,” as they pursued little boys and girls and destroyed them. We might as well draw the veil of charity over the concluding scene—the pursuit and the butchery.