CHAPTER XXII.

THE INDIAN PRISONERS--THE TRIAL.

After liberating the captives it became necessary to at once proceed against the Indians, and to this end the General appointed a commission consisting of Colonel William Crooks, president; Lieutenant-Colonel William R. Marshall, Captains H. P. Grant, H. S. Bailey and Rollin C. Olin and Lieutenant I. V. D. Heard as recorder. The Indians were properly represented, and through an interpreter understood the nature of the charges brought against them.

The rescued white captives, as soon as possible, were sent under suitable escort to Fort Ridgely and then forwarded to their friends. As before narrated, some of them had formed quite strong attachments for their dusky protectors.

And it is not to be wondered at. Because a man's skin is red or black it does not follow that his heart is black. The blackest hearts the world's history ever recorded beat beneath the whitest breasts.

These friendly Indians were in a very small minority, succeeded in saving the lives of the captives. It was a watch by day and by night, and through a bold determination, that the few friendly ones succeeded in saving, as they did, these captives, and they would be less than human if they did not form strong attachments for their dusky friends.

After the departure of the white captives, the Indian trial proceeded, but for good reasons the General concluded to move the camp down to the Lower Agency on the Red Wood River. The Indian camp, mostly made up of women and children, had been moved from Yellow Medicine to this place, where the trial still progressed.

It was really amusing to sit by and listen to the testimony given in by the Indians through their interpreter. They were nearly all like the white criminals of to-day--innocent. I will only record a few. Cut-Nose, for instance, will be a fair example of others, who were as guilty wretches as ever escaped the immediate vengeance of an outraged people.

The bloody old chief tried to play the innocent by saying he was not in the battles to hurt anyone. He was most always there, but he was engaged in some innocent pastime, such as feasting on roast beef and green corn, while his comrades of the paint and feathers were killing people by the score. If he fired at all it was at random and nobody was hurt. He would steal, but that was for the benefit of his wife; she insisted upon his doing something towards the support of herself and their Indian kids; but as for killing anyone, oh! no, he could not think of that for a minute.

We have his picture here, and his looks are a "dead giveaway;" and, besides, twenty-seven murders were traced directly to him, and his protestation of "me good Injun" all went for nought. He was a notoriously bad Indian; he was so adjudged by the commission, who condemned him to death, and he finally dangled at one end of a hempen cord.

Another one, prematurely gray, thought this ought to be evidence in his favor, and others protested that they were too weak to face fire; others, that their lives were threatened and they were compelled to go on the war path; others, that they slept while their more wakeful companions fought; and one old man who said he was fifty years old a great many years ago, thought he might be excused, but a boy swore straight against him and said, "I saw that man kill my mother," which solemn words settled the prisoner's fate.

This Indian was "Round Wind," but it was afterwards shown that he was not there and he was reprieved just before the day set for the execution.

Among the Indian prisoners were some who had been enlisted in the "Renville Rangers," and had deserted to their friends--our enemies. These rangers were all Indians and half-breeds, and it was largely from this fact that the Indians conceived the idea that all the white men had left the state and that the time was propitious for the Indians to strike to regain their territory.

It was proven conclusively that these men had been in all the battles, and at Wood Lake one of them had taken the first scalp, and this from an old man and a former comrade in his company. For this he received one of the two belts of wampum which had been promised by Little Crow as a reward for killing the first white man. These men all offered excuses, but the evidence was so overwhelmingly against them that they also were condemned to death.

It was necessary to make an indiscriminate capture of the Indians and then investigate their several cases to find out the guilty ones, because, there were many among them who no doubt had been compelled to participate in the fights we had with them at Birch Coolie and Wood Lake, and only kept with the hostiles from policy and to save the lives of the white people. To these and a good old squaw, well known in St. Paul and other parts of the Union as "Old Betz," over 400 persons owe their lives.

"Old Betz" has gone to her reward in the happy hunting grounds, having lived over seventy-five years. She was a good woman and a good friend to the early settlers of Minnesota. Others who were friendly to the whites and loyal to their great father at Washington were liberated, and the guilty placed under strong guard.