Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1892 — Dynamite in an Indian Fight. [ARTICLE]

Dynamite in an Indian Fight.

“I have had a good many scrimmages with Indians of various tribes, but the wildest of the whole copper-colored breed are the Sioux,” said Major Dan Allen, one of the original “path tinders’’ of the trackless West, to the writer.' “Most Indians do their fighting from cover, but the Sioux fear no one, and would fight Napoleon's Old Guard in an open fieid. When they tackle you, you can just make up your mind to do some killing cr lose your scalp. “I was out in the southwestern part of what is now South Dakota a few years ago with a hunting party, when we encountered a lot of bucks on the war-path. .There were twenty of them, while my party only numbered half-a-dozen, but the redskins had the old-fashioned muzzle-loaders. There wasn’t a rock or tree for miles, and we had to stand up and fight without cover of any kind. One of the party was a mining-engineer who had been prospecting for pay rock and had with him several pounds of dynamite and an electric battery. He was a Yankee. He concealed the explosive in the grass, attached the wire, and we retreated slowely about 400 yards end sopped. The redskins didn’t waste any time manoeuvring; they came and saw and expected to conquer in short order. On they came, straight as the crow flies; and we lay down in the grass with rifles cocked. It was an interesting moment for us. If the battery failed to do its duty, we were gone to a man. But it didn’t. As the foremost horse reached the place where the explosive was concealed the Y’ankee turned on the current. There was an explosion that made the very ground shake, and the air for forty rods was full of horse-flesh and fragments of noble redmen, saddles and rifles, blankets and buckskin. ‘Now’s our time, boys,’ I called, and we ran forward and began firing into the terrified savages as fast as we could pul! a trigger. The remnant of; the party took flight.”—[St. Louis GlobeDcmocrat. -‘