The heroic missionary priest, Father Craft, who had given a large part of his life to work among the Sioux, by whom he was loved and respected, had endeavored at the beginning of the trouble to persuade the stampeded Indians to come into the agency, but without success, the Indians claiming that no single treaty ever made with them had been fulfilled in all its stipulations. Many of the soldiers being of his own faith, he accompanied the detachment which received the surrender of Big Foot, to render such good offices as might be possible to either party. In the desperate encounter he was stabbed through the lungs, but yet, with bullets flying about him and hatchets and warclubs circling through the air, he went about his work, administering the last religious consolation to the dying until he fell unconscious from loss of blood. He was brought back to the agency along with the other wounded, and although his life was despaired of for some time, he finally recovered. In talking about Wounded Knee with one of the friendly warriors who had gone into the Bad Lands to urge the hostiles to come in, he spoke with warm admiration of Father Craft, and I asked why it was, then, that the Indians had tried to kill him. He replied, “They did not know him. Father Jutz [the priest at the Drexel Catholic mission, previously mentioned] always wears his black robe, but Father Craft on that day wore a soldier’s cap and overcoat. If he had worn his black robe, no Indian would have hurt him.” On inquiring afterward I learned that this was not correct, as Father Craft did have on his priestly robes. From the Indian statement, however, and the well-known affection in which he was held by the Sioux, it is probable that the Indian who stabbed him was too much excited at the moment to recognize him. [Illustration: PL. XCVIII AFTER THE BATTLE] The news of the battle was brought to the agency by Lieutenant Guy Preston, of the Ninth cavalry, who, in company with a soldier and an Indian scout, made the ride of 16 or 18 miles in a little over an hour, one horse falling dead of exhaustion on the way. There were then at the agency, under command of General Brooke, about 300 men of the Second infantry and 50 Indian police.