Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

McCORMICK MESSENGER. McCORMICK, S. C.. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1939 Recent Death of an 88-Year-Old Kansas Woman Recalls Gen. Custer's Dramatic Rescue of Two Captives From Cheyenne Indians 70 Years Ago The three Cheyenne Indians who were held as hostages by Custer for the surrender of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White and who were later taken to Fort Hays where two of them were killed by their guards. There is much confusion as to the identity of these Indians. Custer gives their names as Fat Bear, Dull Knife and Big Head and those are the names accompanying the above illustration (a wood cut made from a photograph taken at Fort Dodge, Kan., March 13, 1869) which appears in Mrs. Custer’s book “Following the Guidon.” Grinnell, quoting differ ent Cheyennes as his authority, names them as Younger Bear, Chief Comes in Sight and Island (or Lean Man) but elsewhere in his book, “The Fighting Cheyennes,” says that the two who were killed by their guards at Fort Hays were Slim Face and Curly Hair. Jlsk Me Jlnolher 0 A General Quiz rnmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimmmmmmm The Qaeetions 1. Why was the site of Washing ton, D. C., chosen for the national capital? 2. What was the heaviest one- day rainfall in history? < 3. What approximate portion of the earth’s surface is covered with trees? 4. Can fish hear? 5. What does pantheon mean? 6. What character of Greek mythology fell in love with hi? own reflection and was metamorphosed into a flower? 7. Can you translate the follow ing into a familiar proverb: Too great a number of culinary assist ants may impair the flavor of the consomme? 8. Where and what is the Acrop olis? 9. What country bears the fol lowing sobriquet: Marianne? • 10. Why is a year divided into 17 months? The Answer* 1. It was at that time the center of population. 2. The heaviest one-day rainfall occurred in Baguio, Philippine is lands, on July 14-15, 1911, when 46 inches of water fell in 24 hours. 3. About one-fifth, an area roughly 8,000,000 square miles. 4. Scientists report fish cannot hear and are affected only by sounds that cause vibrations in the water. 5. A temple of all the gods. . 6. Narcissus. 7. Too many cooks spoil the broth. 8. A famous group of buildings in Athens. 9. France. 10. From the cycle of the moon’s phases, of which there are ap proximately 12. CHILLS AND FEVER Here 9 * Relief From Malaria! Don’t let Malaria torture you! Don’t shiver with chills and burn with fever. At first sign of Malaria, take Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic. A real Malaria medicine. Made espe cially for the purpose. Contams tasteless quinidine and iron. Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic ac tually combats Malaria infection in the blood. It relieves the freezing chills, the burning fever. Helps you feel better fast. Thousands take Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic for Malaria and swear S it. Pleasant to take, too. Even ildren take it without a whimper. Don’t shiver and bum. At Ma laria’s first sign take Grove’s Taste less Chill Tonic. At all drugstores. Buy the large size as it gives you much more for your money. Right Preferred I prefer to do right and get no thanks, rather than do wrong and get no punishment.—Marcus Cato. Sweating FEETGIVE 3 CHEERS for a soothing', cooling rub with Mex ican Heat Powder. Use both morning and evening for smooth, happy feet. At Ease What I have gained from phil osophy is the ability to feel at ease in any society.—Aristippus. " '..Vs.' ■ 1 1 " ‘7* S=9SB9SSSBSS=SaSSSS=SaSSS=9 sore eyes get worse and worse the longer you let them go; Leonard!’a Golden Eye Lotion relieves in flammation and soreness in one GOLDEN EYE LOTION MAKES WEAK EYES STRONG Nem Lartt 5<z* with Dropper 50 cemtt Aids to Truth Truth is strengthened by obser vation and delay, falsehood by haste and uncertainty.—Tacitus. IF YOU SELL Cosmetics—Household Goods—Polishes, etc. writ* at one* for oar price* and Mixing plana Big r*paat business on fine product*. We need more buttling men and women to take orders and dellTer—Writ* HOUSE OF FAYRIN Bex SS2-LoutsvtHe. Ky. BEACONS of —SAFETY— • Like a beacon light on the height—the advertise ments in newspapers direct you to newer, better and easier ways of providing the things needed or desired. It shines, this beacon of newspaper advertising—and it will be to your advantage to fol low it whenever you make a purchase. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) S HE died the other day and her passing snapped a living link between the present-day, modern Amer ica and an era in frontier history which now seems al most as remote as the days when Kentucky was the “Dark and Bloody Ground** and a “Narrative of an Indian Captivity” was a familiar type of American literature. Yet it was only 71 years ago that she was kidnaped from her home in Kansas by a war party of Cheyenne Indians, suffered indescribably while held a captive by that tribe and was finally rescued by Gen. George A. Custer and his famous Seventh cavalry in one of the most dramatic incidents in the whole thrill ing history of the Wild West. Her name was Mrs. Sarah Brooks but back in 1868 she was Sarah White, the 17-year-old daughter of Benjamin White, who had brought his wife and 10 chil dren from Wisconsin the previous year to a homestead on Granny creek, a tributary of the Repub- lican river in northern Kansas. On the morning of that fateful day, August 13, 1868, Benjamin White and his three sons had gone to the meadows along the Republican to cut hay, leaving his wife, Sarah, their oldest daughter, and three smaller chil dren at the cabin. Presently a party of six Chey enne Indians appeared, profess ing friendship and asking for food. Mrs. White prepared a meal for them and as they start ed to leave they seized young Sarah and dragged her out of the house. One of the Indians leaped upon his horse and with the aid of another savage pulled her, fighting desperately, up beside him. Then, followed by the hor ror-stricken gaze of her mother who ran after her with out stretched arms, they rode away. Meanwhile, another party of the same band of Indians had discovered her father and broth ers working in the meadow near the Republican. The boys es caped by running to the river and hiding in the bushes along its banks but the Indisms killed Mr. White and rode away with his team of horses. That night when these Indians rode into the Cheyenne camp on Buffalo creek, young Sarah White recognized her father’s horses and wept bit terly over this evidence that he and her brothers were dead. A Stratagem That Failed. In the camp on the Buffalo she found an old newspaper which she hid in her dress. The next day, as she rode along, she tore off bits of the paper and dropped them unobtrusively, hoping that this might mark a trail which a party of rescuers could follow. But it was a vain hope, for seven months were to elapse before she was to be released from the hor rors of her captivity. Three months after she had been captured, her misery was shared by another young woman —Mrs. Anna Brewster Morgan, the 19-year-old bride of a young farmer in the Solomon valley. He had been attacked while working in the field by Indians who shot him with arrows, left him for dead, and, dashing to his cabin, seized his wife and bore her away. This party of Cheyennes traded her for some ponies to the band which held Sarah White captive. The Indians made slaves of the two girls and subjected them to all sorts . of indignities. The squaws, who were jealous of them, were especially cruel to them. They forced the white women to cut wood and carry it until their shoulders were raw and sore and when they sank down with exhaustiqn they were lashed with whips until the blood ran. Sheridan Takes the Field. These two unfortunate women were only two of the victims of a series of raids by Indians through Kansas that year during which several hundred settlers were slain and members of their families carried away as cap tives. As a result of these depre dations, Gov. Samuel N. Craw ford called upon the federal gov ernment for aid and Gen. Phil Sheridan was ordered into the field. For the difficult task of punishing the Indians and rescu ing their captives, Sheridan re lied mainly upon the Seventh cavalry, led by Lieut. Col. George A. Custer. Meanwhile, Governor Crawford had raised a regiment, the Nine teenth Kansas Volunteers, re signed temporarily from his post as governor and led the regiment to a rendezvous with Sheridan at Camp Supply, 100 miles south of Fort Dodge. In March, 1869, Cus ter, with 11 troops of the Seventh and 10 of the Nineteenth Kansas, set out to find several bands of the Cheyennes who were still on the warpath. A short time before a young man applied for permission to ac company the expedition. At first Custer refused but when he learned that the boy’s name was Brewster and that he was the brother of Mrs. Morgan who was still held captive by the Indians he permitted him to go along. Young Brewster did not know which Indians had carried his sis ter away but he hoped that Cus ter’s command might find them and that, by being with it, he might aid in her rescue, if she were still alive, or at least, learn what her fate had been. Discovers Cheyenne Camp. Moving out from Fort Cobb Custer’s command struck a fresh trail and followed it to the north fork of the Red river in what is now * Wheeler county, Texas. There he discovered a camp of Cheyennes under the leadership of a chief known to the whites as Medicine Arrow but called Rock Forehead by his own peo ple. A little farther down the stream was the camp of Chief Little Robe, a noted “friendly.” Sometime during this march Custer had learned that two white women were captives in Mrs. Sarah Brooks (from a photograph taken in 1934 and re produced here by courtesy of the Kansas City Star and the Con cordia (Kan.) Blade-Empire). Medicine Arrow’s camp and henceforward their rescue be came his main objective. As the commander of the Sev enth, accompanied by an order ly, approached the camp, he be gan making the customary Plains signal of his desire for a confer ence—by riding around in circles as he advanced. As he drew near, he was met by Medicine Arrow and several other chiefs who invited him to come into the camp for a council. Although Custer was fearful that they had a treacherous intent he agreed to their proposal and entered the camp accompanied only by Colonel Cook of the Seventh. The result was that the soldiers camped near the Indian village and a series of councils ensued. The testimony as to subsequent events is very contradictory. The version which Custer gives in his book, “My Life on the Plains,’’ is sharply at variance in many details with the Indians’ version, as given in George Bird Grinnell’s “The Fighting Chey ennes.” Custer tells how a large party of Indians entered his camp and strove to distract his atten tion while the remainder made preparations to take down their lodges and move the village away before the troops realized what they had done. Thereupon, he seized four Indians—“chiefs and warriors of prominence,” Custer calls them—to hold as hostages for the surrender of the two white women. The Indians insinuate that Cus ter acted treacherously in seizing these men while they were mak ing a friendly visit to his camp and that they were old men of no particular importance. How ever that may be, the fact re mains that when Custer sent one of his four captives to the village bearing a message that he would hang the other three if the cap tives were not delivered up to him, the Indians, after protesting that the women were not in their camp, finally sent Chief Little Robe to Custer’s camp to arrange for the exchange of prisoners. Rescue of the Captives. Custer tells a dramatic story of the arrival of the two women in his camp the next morning—how he sent three of his senior of ficers forward to escort them into camp and how young Brewster, unable to restrain his eagerness to see his long-lost sister, raced forward past the officers and clasped Mrs. Morgan in his arms. “The appearance of the two girls was sufficient to excite our deepest sympathy,” writes Custer. “Miss White, the young er of the two, though not beau tiful, possessed a most interesting face. Her companion would have been pronounced beautiful by the most critical judge, being of such a type as one might imagine Maud Muller to be. Their joy at their deliverance, however, could not hide the evidences of priva tion and suffering to which they had been subjected by their cruel captors. They were clothed in dresses made from flour sacks, the brand of the mills being plain ly seen on each dress; showing that the Indians who had held them in captivity had obtained their provisions from the govern ment at some agency. “The entire dress of the two girls was as nearly like the In dian mode as possible; both wore leggings and moccasins; both wore their hair in two long braids, and as if to propitiate us, the Indians, before releasing them, had added to the wardrobe of the two girls various rude ornaments, such as are worn by squaws. About their wrists they wore coils of brass wire; on their fingers had been placed numerous rings and about their necks strings of variously colored beads. Almost the first remark I heard young Brewster make after the arrival of the two girls was ‘Sister, do take those hateful things off.’ ” The women were placed in an ambulance and the Seventh start ed on its march to Fort Dodge, taking with it the three Indian captives whom Custer deter mined to hold until the Cheyennes came in off the warpath. Mrs. Morgan was overjoyed to learn that her husband was recover ing from his arrow wounds in the post hospital at Fort Hays. Later they went back to their home in the Solomon valley and lived there for several years. But the memory of her captivity preyed upon her mind which at last gave way and she ended her days in a Kansas state insane asylum. Miss White also returned to her home and while engaged in teach ing school met E. O. Brooks, a veteran of the Civil war. They were married and made their home near the White homestead where she had been taken cap tive. There she lived for more than 70 years, reared a family of one son and six daughters and tried to forget what she had suf fered for seven months as an In dian captive. Death came on May 12, 1939, to end the ugly nightmare of those memories. Six years after the capture of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White by the Cheyennes and their rescue by Gen. George A. Custer oc curred a similar incident in which the same tribe of Indians was in volved and in which another fa mous Indian fighter, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, played the role of res cuer. That was the capture and release of the German sisters during the war with the Southern Plains tribes in 1874-75. On September 10, 1874, a cov ered wagon, drawn by an ox team, and accompanied by two' men on horseback, halted on the banks of a small stream in west ern Kansas. The party was .com posed of John German, a native of Blue Ridge, Ga., and a veteran of the Confederate army, his wife, Lydia, their son, Stephen Wise German, and their six daughters—Rebecca Jane, 20; Katherine, 17; Joanna, 14; So phia, 12; Julia Arminda, 7; and Nancy Adelaide, 5, called “Ad- die” by her sisters. They were on their way to Colorado where they were going because of German’s poor health, and they expected to reach Fort Wallace, not far from the Colorado border, the next day. The next morning their camp was attacked by a war party of 19 Cheyennes who killed and scalped Mr. and Mrs. German, their son and two of the girls, Rebecca Jane and Joanna. Then they carried the other four daugh ters away and held them as cap tives until November 8 when the camp of Chief Gray Beard was attacked by a detachment of General Miles* army, led by Lieut. Frank D. Baldwin. When the Indians fled, taking Sophia and Katherine with them, they left the two little girls, Julia GEN NELSON A. MILES and Addie, who were found by the soldiers in the deserted camp. “When rescued they were the most emaciated mortals I have ever seen. Their little hands were like birds’ claws,” writes General Miles in his memoirs. They were sent to Fort Leaven worth under the care of an army physician and there the women of the garrison nursed them back to health. On returning to Miles’ command, the doctor brought with him a photograph of Julia and Addie and when Miles saw this it gave him an idea. On the back of it he wrote this message: Headquarters Indian Territory Expedi tion in the field, January 20, 1875. To the Misses German: Your little sisters are well, and in the hands of friends. Do not be discouraged. Every effort is being made for your wel fare. NELSON A. MILES, U. S. Army Colonel and Brevet Major General Commanding Expedition. Then he gave the photograph to a Delaware Indian scout and told him to find the Indians who still held Sophia and Katherine and give the picture to them secretly. He was also ordered to tell Chief Stone Calf that no mercy would be shown his band if the girls were not returned alive and unharmed. The Dela ware scout set out over the snowy plains and after a remarkable journey of more than 400 miles, found the Cheyenne camp on the Pecos river in New Mexico and managed to deliver his message to the captives who had begun to despair of ever being rescued. By this time the Cheyennes, who had been kept so constantly on the move by the vigorous cam paigning of Miles and Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, and who were near ly destitute, were quite willing to listen to peace overtures. So Stone Calf took the two girls from their captors, placed them in a lodge next to his and treated them with special consideration on the journey back to the Chey enne agency in Indian territory. There they were surrendered to Miles. A short time later the four Ger man sisters were reunited at Fort Leavenworth and on the recom mendation of General Miles the sum of $10,000 was deducted from the annuities given to the Cheyennes and $2,500 placed to the credit of each of the girls. Miles became their guardian and served thus until they came of age. Addie, who became Mrs. Frank Andrews and mother of 11 chil dren, was, at the last accounts, living near Bern, Kan.; Julia, now Mrs. Julia Brooks, was living near Humboldt, Neb., and near her lived her sister, Addie; and Katherine, now Mrs. Katherine Swerdfefer, was living at Atas cadero. Calif Sew a Bag to Keep Your Ball of Twine In By RUTH WYETH SPEARS \\/ - HEN you want to wrap a v v package do you always know where to find twine? A ball of it in a bag like this one hung over the kitchen table will be ready for use. After trying this you are sure to want to make some of these twine bags to seH at the next bazaar or to use as gifts. Scraps from your piece bag may be used in this way. The bag is just big enough to cover the ball loosely and is made of a straight piece of goods with the ends seamed together with a French seam. The top and bottom are bound with prepared bias binding. A single cord is run through the binding at the bottom. It is drawn up to leave a small opening and the ends are tied and sewn se curely. Two cords are run through the top with a loop of each cord left on the outside so that the bag may be drawn up by pulling them. The ball of twine is placed inside with the end run ning through the bottom opening ready for use. Did you see the good news in the paper last week? About the new Sewing Book No. 3, which is now ready for mailing. It contains 32 useful ideas for home decorating; and things to use as gifts, and to sell at bazaars. You will be de lighted with it. The price of this new book is only 10 cents postpaid. Send coin with name and address to Mrs. Spears, 210 S. Desplaines St., Chicago, 111. Need for Wild Tigers Wild tigers are an economic ne cessity and, therefore, protected by law on Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, an island nearly twice as large as Great Britain. Before this measure was taken a few years ago, tigers were killed in such numbers that wild boars, on which they preyed, multiplied and destroyed most of the palm trees whose oil is Sumatra’s chief source of income.—Collier’s. SNOW-WHITE PETROLEUM JELLY Poverty vs. Covetousness We think poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness.—Jeremy Taylor. be miserable with MALARIA and COLDS when 666 will check MALARIA fast and gives symptomatic cold relief. LIQUID. TABLETS. SALVE. NOSE DROPS Thought a Seed Thought is the seed of action.— Ralph Waldo Emerson. • Of Its Fresh Water and Deep Sea Fishing • Of the Bountifulness of Its Gamo • Of Its Year Round Sports • Its Climate • Its Truck Fanning Opportunities All covered thoroughly in the new and delightfully written book "SO THIS IS FLORIDA" By Frank Parker Stock bridge and John Holliday Perry Over 300 pages 63 full page illustrations beautifully bound • Send $1.00 to Box 600, Jacksonville, Florida FILMS Developed- Printed Any Size Roli 6 or 8 Exposures Fadeless Prints • Postage Paid • DIXIE FILM SERVICE F. a Ben 438S-A Atlanta, Go.