The Second William Penn | Page 8

place called Sand Creek. It was at the latter named place
where Major John L. Chivington made his bloody raid.
In the summer of 1864 the combined Indian tribe went on the warpath.
They were camped north of Fort Larned, garrisoned with Kansas troops
and a section of a Wisconsin battery in charge of Lieutenant Croker,
and Captain Ried was the commanding officer. The Indians first
commenced war at Fort Larned and ran off some horses, beef cattle and
some milch cows that were the property of James Brice.
At the time Chivington made this raid there was camped at Sand Creek
about one hundred and fifty lodges of women, children and a few
decrepit Indians. This was one of the most brutal massacres a white

man was ever known to have commanded. With some sixty soldiers he
said he would go and "clean 'em up." He got there at daybreak and
began to fire on the Indians and killed a great many women and
children. He burned several lodges, confiscated their provisions,
blankets and other supplies. The Indian braves who were able to fight
had some poisoned arrows which they used advantageously. Every
soldier they hit was either seriously injured or killed. Up in the day the
Indians got reinforcements and gave Chivington's raiders quite a chase.
These Indians were left entirely destitute, for Chivington had seized all
the supplies and either loaded them into his wagons or destroyed them
by fire. For that reason the surviving Indians commenced depredations
on the stock and other property of settlers at Fort Larned.
It is said, but as to the truthfulness of the assertion I do not vouch, for it
did not happen under my personal knowledge--that a man by the name
of McGee, who was a teamster on a train loaded with flour for the
Government, was captured not far from there and was scalped and left
for dead; that the Eastern mail happening to come along shortly after,
found the body and placed it upon the boot of the coach; that before
arriving at Fort Larned they found that instead of carrying a corpse, as
it was at first supposed, they carried a living man. This man was taken
to a hospital and got well. He raised a family of children and his sons,
some of them live in or around Independence, Missouri. This man, Mr.
McGee, is said to be the only scalped man in the United States who
lived after being scalped.
After this brutal crime against the Indians, trouble commenced on the
Santa Fe Trail, and the sight of a "pale face" brought memories of the
assassination of their tribe by Chivington and his raiders.
At this Indian lodge where the Chivington massacre occurred lived the
father-in-law of John Powers. He was known the plains over as a
peaceable old Indian (Old One Eye), the chief of the Cheyennes, but his
"light was put out" during this desperate fight with Chivington.
Right here I will give an account of the marriage of John Powers to the
daughter of "Old One Eye."

Mr. Powers had crossed the plains several times as wagon-boss for
Colonel Charles Bent, who was the builder of Bent's Fort, also the new
fort at Fort Lyons. He was also wagon boss for Mr. Winsor, the settler
at Fort Lyon at the time of his marriage to the daughter of the old chief.
Mr. Powers' mother, Mrs. Fogel, and his stepfather received the news
of Powers' marriage with many misgivings and rebuked him severely
for having made such a choice, finally vowing that they disowned him
and never wanted to see him again. With a finality not at all
disconsolate John Powers set about to polish his Indian wife for the
polite society of his mother, so he sent her to school, chaperoned by
Miss Mollie Bent.
At the school at West Port this Indian girl soon excelled and under the
careful management of Miss Bent the wife of John Powers soon
became an expert in domestic science. But Powers, getting impatient
for a meeting between his mother and wife, asked Mollie Bent to
arrange it. So accordingly Miss Mollie visited at the home of her
friends, the Fogels, and during the gossip Miss Bent casually remarked
to Mrs. Fogel that she had a most charming friend, an Indian maid, over
at the school whom she would like to introduce to her.
When Mrs. Fogel insisted upon her coming over the following
Saturday, bringing with her her friend, Mollie Bent's heart was little
less glad than John Powers.
At last the eventful day had arrived. Mollie, accompanied with John's
"Indian squaw," went to the home of Mrs. Fogel. The high-spiritedness
of the Indian maid soon captivated Mrs. Fogel. After they had eaten
supper Mrs. Fogel was