The Spirit Lake Massacre

by Thomas Teakle

For two hours time dragged on slowly and fearfully at the Gardner home: all eyes watched either for Indians or for the return of the messengers. Neither came. When the sun had sunk to the horizon Gardner stepped outside to look about. Suddenly he came running back calling that the Indians were coming. Upon entering the cabin he began barring the door, determined after the experience of the morning not to allow the red men to enter. Mrs. Gardner objected that they should have faith in the good intentions of the Indians and that it was better for one not to shed the blood of another. Yielding to her importunities, Gardner desisted from barricading the door. The family now awaited in terror the second coming of the Indians.

Looking through the windows they observed nine warriors hurrying toward them from the direction of the camp. With no more formality than during their morning visit they again entered the cabin. One glance sufficed to tell the frightened family that the anticipated trouble was upon them. The first demand of the Indians was for flour—not only for a part of what the Gardners had but for all. The scarcity of flour had been one of the reasons for the planned trip to Fort Dodge; and yet, at the risk of causing his family to suffer privation, Gardner turned to the flour barrel to gratify the demands of the Indians. As he turned a buck raised his gun to shoot. It seems that either Mrs. Gardner or Mrs. Luce made a move to stay the act of the Indian, but failed. Gardner fell to the floor, the third victim of the Indian massacre at Okoboji. Having made a beginning, the Indians no longer restrained the impulses of their savage nature. After the killing of Gardner their stay at Okoboji became a carnival of murder.

As soon as Gardner fell, the quest for flour was lost sight of and the Indians turned upon the two women who had attempted to protect the object of their rage. Mrs. Luce and Mrs. Gardner were seized and held by several Indians while others beat them into insensibility and death with the butts of their guns. This was but the work of a moment. Indeed, so quickly had it been done that Abbie Gardner did not see the act herself; in her later relations of the affair she relied wholly upon stories related to her frequently by the Indians in their flight following the massacre. Without pause Mr. and Mrs. Gardner and Mrs. Luce were scalped—an act of savagery which the children were compelled to witness. When the Indians entered the cabin, Abbie was striving to quiet the younger child of her sister, while the other Luce child clung to one side of her chair and at the other side crouched Abbie’s brother, Rowland Gardner, Jr.

Having destroyed the parents, the Indians now turned to the destruction of the children. Rowland Gardner and the two Luce children were torn away from Abbie and beaten to death against the posts of the door and the trunks of trees in the yard. Dropping the dead bodies upon the ground, the Indians appeared to counsel concerning the further disposition of the house and its only living inmate. At the close of their deliberation Abbie was seized by one of the Indians and, much to her surprise, was not killed but led away in the direction of the Indian camp. Her last sight of her family showed them strewn lifeless and bleeding about the doorstep of her home.[154]

Before the Gardner cabin was deserted by the Indians it was completely ransacked. Chests were broken open and their contents scattered about the house and yard. All available food stores and clothing were carried away to the camp. Abbie had abundant opportunity to learn this when later about their evening camp fires bucks and squaws alike, arrayed in the clothing of the murdered people, wildly recounted the incidents of the day. Although she had been carried away from her home without any provision for clothing against the winter’s cold, she was not allowed to share in the wearing of the stolen goods. Shivering from cold and fright, she witnessed the fiendish joy with which the events of that memorable day were told and retold by the Indians.

As the evening wore on preparations for the scalp dance began. Soon the rhythmic cadence of the hideous dance song started, and the scalps of the day, elevated on the ends of long poles, could be seen swaying back and forth marking time with the movements of the women who bore them. At every shriek of the dancing women, the captive girl doubtless thought her time had come. In the darkness, lighted occasionally by the flaring of a firebrand, the distorted and hideously painted faces of the savages swinging alternately backward and forward in the dance must have seemed to the prisoner a veritable dance of demons. The dance lasted far into the night, with no sleep for the child who was momentarily expecting to fall a victim of savage fury. Toward morning the dance ended and the savages sought a brief respite in sleep to strengthen them for the work of the succeeding day. At the breaking of the early dawn the Indians were again astir, making preparations for a continuation of their bloody work.[155]

While the inmates of the Gardner cabin were being massacred similar events were transpiring at the home of the Mattocks. What actually happened at this cabin is not known, since no living witnesses, other than red men, survived to tell the tale. From the position of the bodies when found, it is inferred that the Mattocks must have sensed the situation; but thinking that their own home was lacking in security had started for the cabin of Harriott, Snyder, and Granger across the strait. Mrs. Sharp states that when the Indians brought her to their camp, which had been moved during the day and pitched near the Mattock home, the cabin was in flames and shrieks of human beings were issuing from it.[156] But this could hardly have been true unless there were persons staying at the Mattock cabin unknown to others in the settlement, since all the people were later accounted for in the bodies found.

Snyder, Harriott, and Harshman apparently discovered what was happening across the strait, and with rifles in hand came to the rescue. This is inferred from the fact that their bodies were found in company with those of the Mattocks. Resistance had evidently been made by the men: it is not unlikely that they were attempting to cover the retreat of Mrs. Mattock and her children, since they were in advance, while Mattock, Snyder, Madison, Harshman, and Harriott were in the rear with the gun in each case lying by the side of the dead owner. Harriott’s gun had its stock broken as if it had been used for a club after other means of defense had been exhausted. Further evidence that resistance was offered to the Indians is to be found in the fact that one young Indian was badly injured, possibly by Dr. Harriott. No one, however, was spared in the attack by the Indians at that point: the dead bodies of eleven persons were found on the path between the two cabins. These were later identified as Mr. and Mrs. Mattock, their five children, Dr. Harriott, Bertell Snyder, Robert Madison, and Joseph Harshman.[157] To make the destruction more complete, fire was set to the Mattock cabin which was soon in ruins.

It is said that, leaving the Gardner cabin shortly after noon, the Indians had gone to Mattock’s cabin where they wished to get some hay with which to feed their ponies. While they were in the act of taking the hay objection was raised. A parley over the matter seems to have been carried on for some time before the Indians arrived at the killing point. Mattock sent to the Red Wing cabin for help, and Harriott, Snyder, and Harshman responded. Meanwhile the Indians appeared to withdraw, and it was probably decided by Mattock, as a measure of added safety, to take the members of his family to the Red Wing cabin. They were in the act of doing so, Mrs. Mattock and the children ahead and the men in the rear guarding the retreat, when they were fired upon by the Indians from ambush. All were killed outright except Harriott, who resisted and before being disposed of had badly wounded at least one Indian.[158] In their relation of the event the Indians spoke of all having left the cabin before it was destroyed by fire.

Across the strait at the Red Wing or Granger cabin, Carl Granger, who for some reason remained at his cabin when the others crossed to the Mattock home, was brutally slain and scalped. The Indians killed him by splitting his head open with an ax which had evidently been taken from the wood pile near by.[159]