Every day we sent out scouting expeditions, and brought in refugees, men, women and children, who were in hiding or wounded, and in the most pitiable condition. From these we learned of many additional atrocities, which kept our passions and desire for revenge at fever heat. On Saturday, the 23d, the Indians who had been all the week besieging Fort Ridgely, abandoned that quest, and came down upon us in full force. The attack commenced about half-past nine o'clock on Saturday morning, and the fight raged hotly and viciously for about thirty hours without cessation. I lost in the first hour and a half ten killed and fifty wounded, out of a command of not more than 250 guns. On the afternoon of the next day the Indians gradually disappeared toward the north, and gave us a breathing spell, and then a relief company arrived and the fighting ceased. On Monday ammunition and provisions were getting short, and fearing a renewal of the attack, I decided to evacuate the town, and go down the Minnesota river to Mankato, a distance of about thirty miles over an open prairie. We had nearly fifteen hundred women and children to take care of, and about eighty wounded men. The caravan consisted of 153 wagons, drawn by horses and oxen; the troops being on foot, and so disposed as to make a good defense if attacked. Everything being ready for a start, some one suggested to me to set a trap for the Indians, when they should enter the town after our departure, as we all supposed they would, there being an immense amount of loot left behind,--stores full of goods of all kinds, and many other things of value to the savage. I had, the day before, put a stop to some of the younger men scalping the eight or ten dead Indians who had been dragged into the town from where they had been killed, regarding it as barbarous. The boys would take off a small piece of scalp, and with its long black hair, tie it into their button-holes, as a souvenir to take home with them. What do you think was the nature of the trap that was proposed to catch the Indians? It makes my blood run cold to think of it, and so disgraceful and diabolical was it that, in all I have said and written about this war in the last thirty-six years, I have never had courage to mention it. Yet as awful as it was, so incensed was I at all the devilish cruelty that had been perpetrated on our people that I at first consented to it, and we went so far as actually to set the trap.