Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians

by Fanny Kelly

That night the command camped about six miles from, but within sight of, the battle-ground, going into camp early in the afternoon. Picket guards were stationed on the hills, three at a post, and soon after the camp was thrown into commotion by the appearance of one of the guard dashing toward camp, at the full speed of his horse, with Indians in pursuit. His companions, worn out with the arduous service of the preceding three days, had laid down to sleep, and before the one remaining on guard could give the alarm, a body of Indians was close upon them. Discharging his rifle to arouse his companions, he had barely time to reach his horse and escape. The bodies of the other two were found next day horribly mutilated; and that night, being within sight of the battle-ground, the firelight revealed the forms of a large body of savages dancing around the burning ruins of their own homes.

Returning to Heart River, General Sully took the emigrants again in charge, and resumed the march toward Idaho.

Traversing a country diversified and beautiful as the sun ever shone upon, presenting at every turn pictures of natural beauty, such as no artist ever represented on canvas, the expedition at last struck the “Mauvais Terra,” or Bad Lands, a region of the most wildly desolate country conceivable. No pen of writer, nor brush of painter, can give the faintest idea of its awful desolation.

As the command halted upon the confines of this desert, the mind naturally reverted to political descriptions of the infernal regions reached in other days.

The Bad Lands of Dakota extend from the confluence of the Yellow Stone and Missouri Rivers toward the southwest, a distance of about one hundred miles, and are from twenty-five to forty miles in width. The foot of white man had never trod these wilds before.

The first day’s march into this desert carried the expedition ten miles only, consuming ten hours of time, and leaving the forces four miles from, and within sight of, the camp, they left in the morning. On the 7th of August, the advance guard were attacked in the afternoon by a large party of Indians. After a toilsome march of many days, a valley in the wilderness was reached, presenting an opportunity for rest, and here the first vegetation was found for the famished horses. In this valley the troops camped; the advance guard were brought back, having suffered some from the attack of the ambushed savages.

Next day commenced one of the most memorable battles ever fought with Indians in the whole experience of the Government. The whole Dakota nation, including the supposed friendly tribes, was concentrated there, and numbered fully eight thousand warriors. Opposed to them was a mere handful, comparatively, of white men. But they were led by one skilled in war, and who knew the foe he had to contend against.

For three days the fight raged, and, finally, on the night of the third day, and after a toilsome march of ten days through the “Bad Lands,” the command reached a broad, open country, where the savages made a final, desperate stand to drive the invaders back. They were the wild Dakotians, who had seen but little of the white settlements, and had a contemptuous opinion. But a new lesson was to be learned, and it cost them dearly. They had seen guns large and small, but the little mountain howitzers, from which shells were sent among them, they could not comprehend, and asked the Indian scouts accompanying the expedition if all the wagons “shot twice.” Terrible punishment was inflicted upon the Indians in that three days’ fight.

At the close of the second day, the brigade wagon-master reported that he had discovered the tracks of a white woman, and believed the Indians held one captive. This was the first intimation General Sully received of my captivity, and, not having received from the western posts any report of captures by Indians, thought it must be some half-breed woman who wore the foot gear of civilization.

But the sympathetic nature of that brave, noble General was stirred to its depths, when his Indian scouts brought in the report that they had talked with the hostile foe, and they had tauntingly said, “we have a white woman captive.”