"We have taken the fort. I am ready to die now."
He sank rapidly and died the following morning, June 18, just as the sun was rising. He left a young wife barely eighteen years old, a daughter of Judge James, of Racine, Wisconsin, and his own little daughter was born three months after his death.
It was necessary to put a guard over the person of Colonel Fry (who was captured with the fort) to save him from being sacrificed to the indignation the men felt against him for having ordered his sharp-shooters to pick off the scalded men and shoot them in the water.
[APPENDIX E.]
WILLIAM WELLS AND REBEKAH WELLS HEALD.
GRATITUDE to our first hero and martyr calls for a somewhat extended study of his life, and it will be found interesting enough to repay the attention.
Colonel Samuel Wells and his brother Captain William Wells were Kentuckians; the family being said to have come from Virginia. William, when twelve years old, was stolen by the Indians from the residence of Hon. Nathaniel Pope, where both brothers seem to have been living. He was adopted by Me-che-kan-nah-quah, or little Turtle, a chief of the Miamis, lived in his house and married his daughter Wa-nan-ga-peth, by whom he had several children, of whom the following left children: