Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1903 — The Pigeon Roost Massacre. [ARTICLE]

The Pigeon Roost Massacre.

The Pigeon Roost monument, provided for in Senator Fortune’s bill, carrying a $2,000 appropriation, which has been signed by the governor, w ill mark the graves of twenty-one victims of an Indian massacre on the afternoon of Sept. 2,1811. Pigeon Roost was a white settlement near the present site of Vienna, Scott county. It was called Pigeon Roost by reason of the fact that innumerable pigeons roosted in the nearby forests. There were not more than thirtyfive men, women and children in the settlement. At the time of the massacre the Shawnee Indians were rendezvousing for the battle of Tippecanoe and were in a savage mood. Two men of the settlement were hunting a bee tree on the afternoon of the massacre, when they were attacked and killed by a band Jof Sbawnees. The sight of blood the Indians and they ptfet out for the Pigeon Roost settleI ment. They reached it shortly beI fore sundown, and in a short time had killed five men and sixteen I women and children. Some of inhabitants escaped by fleeing. : After the massacre the Indians set fire to the village and many of the bodies of the slain were burned. The remaining settlers were prevented frotn avenging the deed by reason of a swollen streapa that blocked their pursuit of the Indians.

The victims were buried in two large graves and the place is sometimes called Sodem Cemetery instead of Pigeon Roost. The graves have bad only a simple mark, but a suitable monument will now be erected as a memorial to their valor. Several former attempts to get an appropriation for a monument at Pigeon Roost failed.