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tion staring them in the face, Harvey Luce and Joseph M. Thatcher started for Waterloo with an ox team and sled for supplies. After a journey over trackless prairies, working their way through immense drifts, they reached Waterloo, loaded their sled, started on their return and reached a cabin ten miles below Emmetsburg, where their team gave out. Thatcher remained here several days to rest the oxen, but Luce, feeling anxious about his family, determined to go on. Here he found Jonathan Howe, Enoch Ryan and Robert Clark who joined him on his homeward journey. Jonathan was a son of Joel Howe; Clark and Ryan were young men, the former from Waterloo, and the latter from Hampton.
After a desperate struggle amid huge snow drifts and blinding storms, Luce and his three companions reached the Gardner cabin on the evening of March 6. On the second day after their arrival the weather had greatly moderated, and Mr. Gardner determined to go to Fort Dodge for provisions. As the family sat down to an early breakfast, the cabin door was opened and fourteen fierce-looking Sioux Indians walked in, led by Ink-pa-du-tah. The Indians at first professed friendship until they had eaten all of the food in the house, when they undertook to seize the guns and ammunition.* But Luce resisted them and a most unequal struggle began. At this moment Dr. Herriott and Carl Snyder entered. Seeing four determined men the savages withdrew. Mr. Gardner, believing that the entire settlement was in danger, urged the young men to notify all of the neighbors to assemble at the Gardner house, which was the largest and strongest, and there defend themselves, if the Indians should become hostile. The young men thought there was no danger and soon after went to their cabin.
The Indians prowled around until near noon when they approached the Mattocks cabin, driving Gardner’s cattle
* Many of the facts relating to the massacre and captivities are taken from the History of the Spirit Lake Massacre written by Mrs. Abbie Gardner Sharp.
