of barbarism could be perpetrated by the disciplined
soldiery of a civilized nation in the nineteenth century. The
conversation so impressed me that I could not drive it out of my mind,
and I kept revolving it and making comparisons with events in my own
experience, until I concluded that it is more than probable that it took
place as related, and have since learned that it actually occurred.

I have seen a good deal of ferocity and savagism, and it was not at all
confined to people acknowledged to be barbarians. I remember an instance
where I came very near being a party to a scheme, the brutality of which
would have made the mutilation of the dead Mahdi commendable in
comparison; but fortunately my better nature and second thought overcame
my passions, and I was spared the perpetration of the awful crime, the
remembrance of which, had it been committed, would undoubtedly have
haunted me through life.

Many of the older settlers of Minnesota will remember the horrors of the
Indian massacre and war of 1862, when the Sioux attacked our exposed
frontiers, and in a day and a half massacred quite a thousand people.
They spared neither age nor sex. It was like all such savage
outbreaks,--a war against the race and the blood. These atrocities
extended over a large and sparsely inhabited area of country, and were
usually perpetrated at the houses of the settlers by the slaughter of
the entire family, sometimes varied by the seizure of the women, and
carrying them off into captivity, which in most instances was worse than
death. Every character of mutilation and outrage that could be suggested
by the inflamed passions of a savage were resorted to, and so horrible
were they that it would shock and disgust the reader should I attempt to
describe them. This condition of things was no surprise to me, because
it was to be expected from savages; but the more we saw and heard of it,
the more exasperated and angered we became, and the more we vowed
vengeance should the opportunity come.

I resided on the frontier at the time the outbreak occurred, and murders
were committed within eight miles of my home before I heard of it, which
was on the morning of the second day. I, of course, immediately, after
disposing of my impedimenta in the shape of women and children, took the
field against the enemy, and by nine o'clock in the evening of the same
day that I heard of the trouble I found myself at the town of New Ulm, a
German settlement