as the day was closing. Her husband and older son were shot dead. She caught her youngest little girl, some six years of age and fled to a small underground excavation used as a milk house, where she eluded discovery, the Indians being more intent on plundering the house. A younger son about fourteen years old, was shot through the fleshy part of the shoulder; instantly falling, he was by the Indians supposed to be killed. After securing such articles from the house as they fancied, and destroying all else, they left, taking captive the two older daughters, the eldest eighteen years old, the sister some ten or eleven, hurrying them across the prairie some distance to a grove. In the grove the Indians kept these girls subjected to their brutal indignities. The following morning the Indians' ponies having strayed the girls escaped, while the Indians were looking for them. Mr. Mark W. Piper found the girls that day, lost on the prairie, and took them to a place of safety. The younger son recovering after the Indians left, called his mother from her hiding place, approaching the house to behold her husband and son cold in death. She, with the assistance of the wounded boy, yoked together a steer of one of her distant neighbors with one of their own, attached them to a sled and started to go to her oldest married daughter (Mrs. Erickson) some three miles distant, first placing pillows under the heads of her husband and son, covering them with blankets. She looked for the last time on her murdered loved ones. Arriving at Erickson's she discovered that the place was apparently deserted. On closer inspection she found Erickson and myself, the only occupants, and we so disabled as to hardly reply to her inquiries. Taking her mismated team of oxen from the sled and hitching them to a wagon that had been standing so near to the house that the reds had not dared to take it, they having driven off the team that had hauled the wagon which had been turned out in the yoke a few rods distant. The weather was warm and Erickson and myself had bled profusely; our cloth ing was saturated with blood and worms were crawling in our wounds. The good old mother re-dressed us with clean clothing, and placing bedding in the wagon assisted us into it and started on the way to Forest City. We camped, or laid in the wagon one night on the way, Mother Erickson caring for us, supplying us with water to quench our thirst and bathe our wounds. The following day we arrived at Forest City, where Ericksons and my wife had come the previous day. We stopped at the house of Captain George C. Whitcomb, where the kindest of care was given us. Poor Mother Enderson, not knowing the fate of her captive girls, mourning the death of her life-partner and son, being almost distracted with grief, she begged of the people to give her work to do, so that she might employ her mind on something else than grief. A man, who with his wife and six small children had emigrated from Wisconsin two years before the war, had made a claim, and such improvements on it as enabled him to be in a fair way to secure a comfortable home, had one ox team, two cows and some other minor effects, in the whole constituting on the frontier, a fair start to do well. He was one who with his family, was made homeless by the Sioux raid and lost the little property he had. Afterward while in the employ of a United States Government contractor, he was killed by the Indians -Uncle Sam's red pets-the goose that lays golden eggs for contractors and agents. The claim for the destruction of his little property was by the widow put in the hand of one of the legion of agents, who were very willing to handle it for the percentage. In due time she received fifty dollars from the agent for the loss of home, her little stock, and her protector and provider, the husband, the father; nothing was left for the support of the widow, and her orphaned, helpless children. Numerous others, the heads and providers, were killed. leaving families to the cold charity of the world. While the frontier war made some men rich it made many poor who were in a fair way to secure homes and independence. People were induced by the General, Territorial and State Governments to settle on the frontier, being promised safety and protection. Either through inefficiency of officials or otherwise the protection failed or was given too late. The Indians have ever been the source from which speculators, contractors and agents have enriched themselves, not only at the expense of the people, but the Indians have been robbed from the time of the first settlement by an avowed,, Christian people. Contractors and stay at homes" made fortunes as the result of the uprising of the Indians in Minnesota in 1862. The whole state was enriched, advanced ten years at least, thereby. The suffering and poverty of the stricken ones redounded to the benefit of those Shylocks who were so circumstanced as to avail themselves of the unfortunate. The blood shed on the frontier was coined into gold by a majority of the people of the state at that time. Whether the uprising of, and the war made by, the Indians was the result of the war of secession or was instigated by the Southern Confederacy, has never been fully proved. Minnesota and her leading citizens might have done themselves honor, had they pensioned the widows, orphans and disabled men of the Sioux Massacre of 1862. Some of the states of the south are more generous, having pensioned widows, orphans and soldiers, survivors of the Lost Cause. Minnesota fails to pension or recognize those who enriched her with their blood in a cause which was won. NATIONAL SONGS. HE DOMINANT, a musical monthly published at Philadelphia, some time ago offered one hundred dollars, and fifty dollars, as first and second prizes for the best and second best patriotic songs, to be awarded by a committee consisting of Colonel John A. Cockerill, editor of the New York Morning Advertiser, Edmund Clarence Stedman, poet and critic, and Jerome Buck, Jr., a member of the editorial staff of the New York World. Several hundred poems were submitted. The awards were unanimously made in favor of Osman C. Hooper for the first prize and Thomas J. Duggan for the second. We append these offerings: SONS OF AMERICA. BY OSMAN C. HOOper. Sons of America! Heirs to the glory CHORUS-Speed the message onward, Strivings deep and long In triumphant song. Liberty and union, Set 'twixt sea and sea; Blood-bought by our fathers, Liberty, dream of the Pilgrims' devotion, CHORUS. Fearful the cost, but how priceless the treasure! Liberty, patron of cot and of palace, CHORUS. May our devotion to thee never cease; Long may we drink from thy heavenly chalice, Banner all glorious, float ever o'er us! CHORUS. Every star shining there steadfast and true; Written for aye in the Red, White and Blue. CHORUS. OLD GLORY. BY THOMAS J. DUGGAN. Old Glory! Flag of Liberty! In triumph wave o'er land and sea, 'Neath Freedom's glorious sway; In beauty to the skies unrolled, And link with thee in pride untold CHORUS-Unfurl thy grandeur to the stars, Renowned in hallowed story: Old Glory! founded by our sires Amid the flame of battle fires, Thy gleam the heart of all inspires The flag of the New World art thou, Of free America! CHORUS. Old Glory! for thy honored past, To never fade away; Triumphant, noble, brave and free, And for America! CHORUS. Another prize of a hundred dollars was offered by The Dominant for the best musical settings for these poems, the object being to secure a genuine home-made national anthem. But it will, of course, take more than the endorsement of a committee to adapt verse or music to such a useits fate must be submitted to the supreme verdict of popular judgment. |