SERVICE OF THE HUTCHINSON GUARDS.

On the 22d of September the Hutchinson Guards, having been already recognized by the State as a regular military organization, were sworn into the service, their time commencing August 23, 1862. They were on duty seventy days, to the first of November.

Lieut. Oliver Pierce, Frank G. Jewett, and David Cross, left Hutchinson on September 23d, to look up a man named Sanborn who had not been seen for several days. They first visited Mr. Webb's house, eight miles distant to the northwest, which they found to have been ransacked. The next stop was at Dr. Kennedy's, where all was topsy-turvy. Surgical instruments, bottles of medicine, pills, plasters, and potions, lay scattered in inextricable confusion. Tincture bottles were found empty. Jars of specimens preserved in alcohol had been drained to the last drop, and all the doctor's collections of rare and interesting entomological, vermiculous, and batrachoid curiosities were in the last stages of decay. The Indians have a deep and abiding faith in fire-water, and look upon the wasting of the smallest quantity as a calamity. They doubtless got some doses this time that were long remembered.

From Kennedy's the men were walking along, slowly and carefully examining the ground, when suddenly three guns were fired, almost at the same instant, and Cross fell to the ground, pierced by a bullet through the heart. He died immediately. The others thought to bring the body back with them, but the Indians were upon them and they had to fight their way to the team, which they made good use of. It did not take their foes more than a minute or two to mount and give chase, and never had that region witnessed such a race. The driver, Pierce, urged the horses to the top of their speed; and thirteen Sioux, on their ponies, were crowding them closely, with Cross's scalp hoisted on a pole for a battle flag. Jewett sat in the rear of the wagon, with his legs dangling down, loading and firing as fast as the swaying and jolting permitted; and the leaders of the chase gave back shot for shot. Three or four at last gave up and turned back. One got to the front, and a well-directed' shot unhorsed him. This ended the pursuit. The next day another party went out and brought in the bodies of both Cross and Sanborn, the

latter having been brained with a grub-hoe and left where he fell. No other stirring event occurred till the following July, when Little Crow was killed about six miles north of Hutchinson.

THE KILLING OF LITTLE CROW.

On the morning of July 3, 1863, Nathan Lamson and his son Chauncey left Hutchinson for their home in the north part of the town, about five miles away, to look after their stock. All being found as they left it a few weeks before, they started out near evening to hunt for a deer. While they were stealing carefully along a dim path or trail, leading northwestward, the old man's quick eye caught sight of something moving in the bushes a few rods beyond them. Peering through the thicket, he saw two Indians, a middle-aged man (afterward ascertained to be Little Crow) and a boy (his son Wowinapa) of about sixteen years, picking raspberries which were abundant and ripe.

Mr. Lamson thought this too good a chance to lose. Creeping to a poplar tree which stood near, he rested his gun against the trunk and fired, wounding Little Crow in the side. He did not fall, but, looking around, saw his assailant, and in an instant sent a bullet through the fleshy part of Mr. Lamson's left shoulder. Chauncey then advanced toward Little Crow, following the rather blind trail around the raspberry patch toward the northwest, while his father dropped to the ground to reload. Little Crow, evidently thinking him killed, seized his son's rifle and moved along the bush-skirted path toward Chauncey. They saw each other and fired at the same moment. Only one report was heard by either Chauncey or his father. Little Crow fell mortally wounded by a bullet through his breast, and Chauncey felt the wind upon his cheek as the other ball passed harmlessly by.

Supposing his father to have been killed, and fearing lest other Indians might be near, Chauncey hurried to give the alarm in Hutchinson, and reached there about ten o'clock that evening. His mother, nearly distracted, begged the men at the fort to go in search of her husband. William Gosnell was the first to vounteer. Birney Lamson, the old man's youngest son, a Frenchman by the name of Le Maitre, and two or three other citizens followed. They, with six mounted men of the Goodhue County Tigers, who were stationed at Hutchinson, set out immediately, and reached

Lamson's house a little past midnight, where they rested about three hours. At the beginning of dawn, they resumed their march. They went north one mile to the woods path before mentioned, and turning to the west followed it about half a mile, when they came to the body of Little Crow stretched out at length on the ground about six rods from the spot where young Lamson delivered the fatal shot.

Nathan Lamson's white shirt and his gun were found in a plum grove near by, but the owner was not to be seen. On the return of the party to Hutchinson, however, he was among the first to welcome them. He had thrown away his shirt, thinking that its color might attract the notice of the foe, and his gun was left because he was not able, in reloading, to get the ball down more than nine inches from the muzzle, so that he feared it would burst if he attempted to fire it. In his trepidation he had filled the barrel nearly full in loading it direct from the powder flask. He had lain concealed in the thicket until nightfall, and then, leaving his shirt and gun, had made his way to Hutchinson, arriving about two o'clock in the morning.

Wowinapa, escaping and returning to rejoin the Sioux in Dakota, was captured twenty-six days later by a party of our soldiers near Devil's lake. His statement, as published by Heard and by Bryant and Murch in their books on the Sioux outbreak and war, proved that the Indian thus shot near Hutchinson was Little Crow, who had been the chief orator and plotter for the massacre of the frontier settlers less than a year before.