Lincoln County

Libbie Custer’s Encounter with Tom Alderdice ... The Rest of The Story

JEFF BROOME

     June 25, 1876 marked the first day of what would turn out to be fifty-seven years of widowhood for Elizabeth Bacon Custer. It was on that fateful day that her husband, George Armstrong Custer, died in his final fight against Indians at the Little Bighorn River in present day Montana. In a span of five short years, from 1885 to 1890, Libbie Custer published three books detailing life with her famous husband. Boots and Saddles, her first book (1885) concentrated on her last three years before widowhood, at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Tenting on the Plains followed in 1887. It presented to the reader her experiences with General Custer in 1866-1867. This book, Libbie’s longest, detailed life in Texas following the Civil War, and her first year in Kansas. Libbie’s third book, published in 1890, was the last book she wrote about her life with her famous husband. This book, Following the Guidon, picked up where Tenting on the Plains left off, mostly focusing on their years together in Kansas from 1868-1869.     

Libbie mentions a little known incident in Following the Guidon that leads to this study. There Libbie speaks of meeting a man who had come to Ft. Leavenworth to plead with the military for help in finding his wife, who had for several weeks been held captive by the Indians. Custer, motivated partly by his desire to see Libbie more cautious in Indian country, asked his wife to visit with this man and hear his tale of woe. Writes Libbie:

He [Custer] came to me … while we were stopped in Leavenworth, to ask me to see a distracted man with whom he had been talking. When I found that the man was almost wild with grief over the capture of his wife by Indians, and the murder of his children, I begged to be spared witnessing such a painful sight when I could do no good. The reply was that sympathy was something everyone needed, and I made no further resistance.[1] The man was as nearly a madman as can be. His eyes wild, frenzied, and sunken with grief, his voice weak with suffering, his tear-stained, haggard face – all told a terrible tale of what he had been and was enduring. He wildly waved his arms as he paced the floor like some caged thing, and implored General Custer to use his influence to organize an expedition to secure the release of his wife. He turned to me with trembling tones, describing the return to his desolate cabin….

Libbie then goes on to describe the scene this man faced when discovering his dead children upon returning home the day after the raid. She is probably inaccurate at some points, but this is to be understood as she is writing this account more than twenty years after the fact. Libbie continues:

The silence in the cabin told its awful tale, and he knew, without entering, that the mother of the little ones had met with the horrible fate which every woman in those days considered worse than death. General Custer was so moved by this story that he could not speak, and I became so unnerved that it was many a night before I could shut my eyes without seeing the little yellow heads of those innocent children clotted with blood, and their sightless blue eyes turned to heaven as if for redress. The lesson was effectual for a time, for not only was I moved to deepest pity for the bereaved man, but I became so terrified that I could not even ride out of camp with an escort without inward quakings, and every strange or unaccountable speck on the horizon meant to me a lurking foe.[2]

Who might this person be that met with Libbie and General Custer at Ft. Leavenworth? The clue to the answer comes in analyzing individual female captive incidents in and around Kansas during Custer’s cavalry command tenure in that state, that is, during the years 1867-1870. There were only four married women captured during the time Custer could have been at Leavenworth and who would have been in captivity long enough for a husband to appeal for military aid at Ft. Leavenworth. Mrs. Clara Blinn was captured near Kansas in southeastern Colorado on October 8, 1868. Separated in a wagon from her husband during an Indian attack, she and her young two-year old son, Willie, remained captives until killed by Indians some time during Custer’s attack upon Black Kettle’s village along the Washita River on November 27, 1868.[3] They were not discovered until December 10, when Custer’s command returned to the Washita battlefield and there found them, frozen to the ground and violently murdered. Clara’s husband, Richard Blinn, can be eliminated as the person visiting with the Custers at Ft. Leavenworth simply because the Blinns had no other children who would have been killed during his wife’s capture. Further, Mrs. Blinn’s captivity did not occur at or near their home, nor was Mr. Blinn away during the attack, all of which would contradict what Libbie recounted in her conversation with the "distracted man."

A second married female captive during Custer’s Kansas tenure was Mrs. Anna Morgan. She had been captured on October 13, 1868, along the Solomon River Valley in Ottawa County. Mrs. Morgan soon found herself in company with another female captive, eighteen-year-old Sarah White, who had been captured two months earlier in Cloud County.[4] In addition to these two captives, the raiding Dog Soldiers at the time of Sarah White's capture also killed thirteen other pioneers.[5] But Mrs. Morgan, newly married, had no children, and her husband was severely wounded at her capture and would have been unable to travel to Ft. Leavenworth. Further, the Custers were not at Leavenworth at this time. On the day of Mrs. Morgan’s capture Custer had just recently returned to his command, having served a nearly year-long suspension from the service, incurred at the end of the unsuccessful Hancock Expedition the year before.[6] Custer had left Monroe, Michigan September 25, when he boarded a train to return to his command. Libbie remained in Monroe. He arrived at Fort Hays on September 30. He does write a letter to Libbie from Ft. Leavenworth on October 2 but shortly after that Custer rejoined his command near Fort Dodge, where preparations were under way for a winter campaign.[7] This campaign led to the already mentioned attack on Black Kettle’s village along the Washita, and finally culminated in the release of Mrs. Morgan and Sarah White along the Sweetwater on March 18 in present day Oklahoma. Thus Mr. Morgan is definitively eliminated at the "distraught man" whom Libbie met at Fort Leavenworth.

Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, under the leadership of Tall Bull, also took the third and fourth married female captives that Libbie might be referring to in her recorded conversation in Following the Guidon. They were both captured on May 30, 1869, as part of the Spillman Creek Raid in Lincoln County, Kansas, a small new settlement near the Saline River, roughly thirty miles west of Salina and north of Fort Harker, respectively.[8] Maria Weichel, recently arrived immigrant from Hanover, Germany, had been in America less than two months before her capture. Her husband, George Weichel, was killed during the raid. They did not have children. Thus, the Weichels are also eliminated as the family Libbie wrote about.

The other captive of the Spillman Creek raid was Mrs. Susanna Alderdice. Susanna is the only captive who fits the story shared in Libbie’s writings. As will be shown later, Susanna was alone with her children when she was captured. Forced to witness the brutal and violent attack upon her

small boys, ranging in age from two to five, Susanna was carried away along with her fourth child, eight-month old Alice Alderdice. Her husband Tom, away from his family at the time of the raid, was witness to the remains of his brutally murdered children the next day.

But it is more than the mere fact that Libbie relates her story in Following the Guidon that assures us that it is the Alderdice family she is referring to. There is irrefutable evidence from Tom Alderdice himself. This comes in a detailed story reported June 20 in the Leavenworth Times and Conservative of his visit to Fort Leavenworth, the very place of Libbie’s encounter, to plead with the military for assistance in locating his captive wife and daughter. Custer and his wife were visiting Leavenworth at that time because of Custer's involvement with the National Horse Fair.[9] The reporter interviewing Tom Alderdice told the story of Tom's family tragedy. It tells of Tom returning from Salina:

On arriving at his home he found it deserted, and was almost paralyzed with grief at finding one of his children … dead on the ground with four bullets in his body, and another of his children dead, shot with five arrows. A third child had five arrow wounds in his body, one entering his back to the depth of five inches…. Mrs. Alderdice and her babe, aged eight months, were carried away captive by the Indians.

The article then goes on to describe the other murders the Indians committed that day. It ends by telling why Tom was at Leavenworth.

Mr. Alderdice is here to make his complaints to the military, and see if any assistance can be rendered him in looking for his wife and child. He has scouted the country for a considerable distance around the scenes of the outrages and gives it as his opinion that the savages have not left this section of the country, but are still prowling around in bands of from four to eight.[10]

No doubt lost in Libbie’s memory when she wrote her book, Tom's eight-month old captive daughter was already murdered. Following the Indian trail in hopes of assisting his wife's escape Tom had discovered an abandoned Indian camp and there, to his horror, found little Alice dead.[11] Three days after her capture, the Indians killed little Alice Alderdice, strangling and dumping her lifeless body near a creek. At the time of Tom’s interview with the Custers, Susanna herself had but three more weeks to live, surviving a total of forty-two days in Indian captivity until shot above the eye and tomahawked to death at the moment of her rescue on July 11, 1869 at the Battle of Summit Springs in northeastern Colorado.[12]

Who was this man Tom Alderdice? Born in Philadelphia on March 11, 1841, the son of Scottish immigrants, Tom’s journey to Kansas was somewhat unique in that he came by way of Confederate service in the 44^th Mississippi Infantry, where he served in Company E. This is something that he apparently kept secret from his family and friends throughout the remainder of his life, perhaps a prudent decision given the general Union sympathies of the typical Central Kansas settler at that time. Captured at the Chickamauga battle, September 19-20, 1863, Tom was transferred to the Rock Island, Illinois, Prisoner of War camp, where he remained for slightly more than a year, at which time he took the Oath of Allegiance and served for one year as a Union soldier. Enlisting on October 17, 1864, Tom was placed as a musician in Company E, 2^nd U.S. Infantry Volunteers and sent to the Kansas frontier, away from any Confederate threat where such "galvanized" Yankees might be tempted to desert their Union brethren to rejoin their Confederate comrades. Having a fair complexion, with light hair and blue eyes, the five-foot, seven-inch Tom was typical in height and weight for a soldier at that time. Serving most of his Union enlistment around the Solomon River near Salina, Tom remained in that area after his discharge, meeting and then marrying the widow Susanna Zeigler Daily in 1866, in Salina, Kansas.[13] 

After Tom's interview with the Custers at Fort Leavenworth, Custer apparently placed Tom in some sort of civilian capacity, perhaps as a scout, with 7^th Cavalry soldiers who had been stationed in the vicinity of Spillman Creek. Company K Farrier William McConnell, who had enlisted in the 7^th Cavalry January 3, 1867, in a short diary he kept for most of the year 1869, writes in his July 23 entry from camp on the Saline River near Spillman Creek:

The Morning cool. Reveille at four o'clock. Started at five. Got into camp of L Troop at about 10 a.m. Got some bad news; the 5^th U.S. Cavalry had a big fight on the Platte River and captured both of the women back from them by killing one and wounding one; also capturing some prisoners. Mrs. Alderdise [sic.] was killed and her little babe also. Her husband is with us.[14]

Later learning the sad fate of his wife Susanna, Tom eventually remarried on August 17, 1873, to Mary Lepper. He

had eight more children with Mary. He died in Conway Springs, Kansas in 1925. A veteran of the Beecher Island fight in 1868, Tom outlived all but two other survivors of that fight.[15]

Susanna, born in the first half of 1840, was twenty-nine when murdered at Summit Springs. She was in the latter stages of pregnancy with her fifth child when her life was violently ended on the wind swept prairie of eastern Colorado at what was at the time called the Battle at Susanna Springs.[16] Susanna Alderdice’s misfortune is a heart-wrenching story of tragedy, yet within this awful tragedy is an amazing story of human triumph, mostly unknown to people interested in western history today.

     To fully appreciate the story of Susanna Alderdice, one must first understand the Kansas frontier of the 1860s, the frontier General Custer’s 7^th Cavalry was detached in order to protect. This era marked the most tumultuous and violent decade in Kansas history. Beginning with the issues of statehood and the clashes of the Civil War in eastern Kansas, including the violent engagements in and around Lawrence, central and western Kansas had its own conflicts with ongoing Indian depredations. Indeed, various Indian tribes in Kansas and Nebraska alone between 1866-1867 killed more than four hundred men, women and children.[17] Following the Civil War, the government did attempt to address this problem. What became known as the Hancock Expedition in the spring and summer of 1867, however, failed to accomplish its mission of removing marauding bands of Indians in and around Kansas.

     The year 1868 was in effect a repeat of what occurred in 1867, even though the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been signed at the close of 1867 by most of the principle chiefs of the Plains Indian tribes. This treaty called for the removal of all bands of Indians from the Kansas frontier onto reservation life in present day Oklahoma. Cheyenne Dog Soldier Chief Tall Bull also signed this treaty, but only after he had been assured that his people could continue to hunt along the Smoky Hill and Republican Rivers in western Kansas.[18] However, not all Indians complied with this

treaty, including Tall Bull. The military had problems locating the non-complying Indians during this time.

Further, the late added hunting clause basically assured ongoing conflict between advancing settlers and roving Indians.[19]

Near the end of the summer of 1868, following Indian depredations against settlers along the Solomon and Saline valleys in central Kansas, where Mrs. Morgan and Sarah White were captured and would remain in captivity through the winter until freed by Custer in early spring, 1869, General Sheridan approved the formation of civilian scouts familiar with the Kansas frontier. In September these fifty-one scouts who referred to themselves as the Solomon Avengers, sixteen of whom lived in the Saline valley,[20] led by Major George A. Forsyth and a staff of four, were surprised by a band of several hundred warriors representing Sioux, Arapahoe and Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. What became known as the Battle of Beecher Island lasted from September 17^th to the 25^th.

One of these scouts, already mentioned, was none other than Tom Alderdice. His wife Susanna, at the time of Beecher Island in 1868, was in the last stages of pregnancy

with her fourth child, her second with Tom.[21] Another scout, the youngest at barely seventeen years of age, was Susanna’s brother, Eli Zeigler.[22] In terms of a military

expedition Beecher Island accomplished nothing, as did another expedition operating out of Fort Dodge under Lt. Col. Alfred Sully.[23] Together these failed expeditions motivated General Sheridan to alter his military tactics in locating and confronting the enemy.

     Thus began a winter campaign to find the enemy. Believing it would be better to attack the Indians in their winter quarters, Sheridan composed three different forces to approach the Indians in their winter camps. One column operated from a supply depot on Monument Creek, coming from Fort Bascom in New Mexico, scouting in and around the Texas

Panhandle. Major Carr led a second force, also operating in the same vicinity, having come there from Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado. Sheridan entrusted the third force to Custer, after recalling him from his military suspension due to his court martial at the end of the Hancock Expedition the year before. Custer’s command included eleven companies of the 7^th Cavalry, in addition to five companies of infantry and twelve companies of the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. With the 7^th Cavalry segment of this command, Custer achieved success, capturing Black Kettle’s village along the banks of the Washita River on November 27, 1868.[24] Fifty-one lodges and their contents were destroyed, one hundred-three Indians killed, and fifty-three female Indians and three children were captured. In addition, nearly nine hundred ponies were also destroyed, an act judged by Custer as necessary to prevent their returning into the hands of the Indians.[25]

This did not end Sheridan’s campaign, however, for there were other bands of non-complying Indians to locate and remove to reservation life. In addition there were the earlier mentioned two captives, Miss White and Mrs. Morgan, still being held in captivity by Cheyenne Indians. Hence Custer continued his campaign, eventually culminating in the March release of both captive Kansas women.[26]

     Meanwhile, Major Carr and his 5^th Cavalry troops had returned to Fort Lyon, then left there north for Fort McPherson in late April.[27] On his way north, near Beaver Creek in northwestern Kansas, Carr discovered Tall Bull’s Indians. Tall Bull had slipped back to Kansas from the

Panhandle country after the Washita battle, heading north into the Republican River country in northwestern Kansas and southwestern Nebraska. On May 13, in the battle at Elephant Rock, a sharp engagement ensued, with Carr achieving success, killing as many as twenty-five Indians and wounding another twenty. Carr’s losses were four soldiers killed and three wounded. Another encounter occurred on May 16, which resulted in three more wounded enlisted men.[28] Indian casualties in this second engagement were unknown. Needing to replenish supplies, Carr then returned to Fort McPherson, temporarily abandoning pursuit of the Indians.

     With Carr at Fort McPherson, Tall Bull was now left unmolested, which allowed him to engage in retaliatory strikes upon unsuspecting civilian settlements in central Kansas, north of the Smoky Hill Trail and south of the Platte River. In the week prior to May 30, Indian raids in north central Kansas resulted in the deaths of fourteen civilians.[29] These retaliatory raids were not because of anger over Sand Creek five years earlier, or even the Washita six months earlier, as is often supposed by some historians. Rather, these retaliatory raids were motivated because of Carr’s May 13th and 16th attack upon Tall Bull near Beaver Creek. Carr’s return to Fort McPherson left the settlers in north central Kansas minimal means of military protection. This was all the opportunity Tall Bull needed.

     Sunday, May 30, marked the beginning of the end for Susanna Alderdice and other settlers along Spillman Creek,

a small creek with deep banks that eventually joins the Saline River three miles west of present Lincoln, Kansas. Including Susanna’s death at Summit Springs, a total of eleven civilians were killed on this May 30 raid, three of them Susanna’s own children, each child brutally murdered before her eyes.

     For Susanna and the other settlers, the day began as a beautiful late spring Kansas day. Earlier that morning Susanna's husband Tom, along with several other men, had left their homesteads to journey to Salina for the purpose of obtaining supplies.[30] There was the additional claim, made later, that they had earlier traveled to Junction City to protest a land claim that had been incorrectly filed by a minor.[31] If the latter claim is correct then Tom and the others must have left a few days earlier, as the trip to and from Junction City would have taken more than one day and all reports agree that they had returned home the day after the raid. This could not have been if they left on their trip the morning of the raid. At any rate, with many of the men away, the small settlement was more vulnerable than normal to Indian attack. Some historians have speculated that Indian scouts observed a lack of men in the settlement and that this awareness thus opened the door for an opportunistic raid.[32]

     Susanna’s younger brother Eli Zeigler, and brother-in-law John Alverson (John was married to Susanna’s sister, Mary Zeigler), stopped to visit with Susanna that Sunday morning before the raid and enjoyed a noon meal with her and her four children. This meal must have occurred at the home of Michael Healy, where Susanna was staying with her children while Tom was away. Other persons staying there included thirty-four year old Bridget Kine and her two-month old daughter Katherine, Mr. And Mrs. Thomas Noon and Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Whalen. Michael Healy and his family had left his home earlier out of concern for the safety of his family because of reports that Indians were committing depredations not far away near the Solomon River. They had temporarily moved to Ellsworth, which was near the protection of Fort Harker. He had left his larger house for use by other settlers, including Susanna's family, who had remained behind.[33]

Susanna's young family included almost six-years-old old John Daily, four-and-a-half year-old Willis Daily, two year-old Frank Alderdice, and eight-month-old Alice Alderdice. Five years earlier Susanna had been married to James Daily and had lived in Salina. Susanna and James were married in Clay County, Missouri on October 28, 1860. Both Susanna and James were twenty-one years of age when married. James was slightly taller than the average male at that time. Having blue eyes and black hair, he stood five-feet, nine-inches tall. After their marriage in Missouri they moved to Salina, Kansas. Their first son, John, was born in Salina on July 1, 1863. Willis Daily was born October 5, 1864. Less than two months before Susanna gave birth to Willis, James enlisted for service in the Civil War, joining many of his neighbors along with his brother-in-law John Alverson in Company D of the 17^th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. James's enlistment was the only one in the company that was for one hundred days. This may have been because of his hardship with a new family and a second child on the way. At any rate, James was detached from his company and stationed at Fort Scott near the Missouri border. James faithfully served his one hundred day enlistment there.[34]

Unfortunately for James his military service proved deadly. Two days before the expiration of his service commitment James entered the general hospital at Fort Scott and eleven days later, on November 25, he died of typhoid fever. Records are unclear whether he died at Fort Leavenworth or Fort Scott.[35] He did not get to see his second son, and indeed, had he learned of Willis's birth by

way of a letter from Susanna, he would have received it at about the time he entered the hospital with his fatal illness. Now widowed, the young Susanna moved back home with her parents, Michael and Mary Zeigler, who also lived in Salina at that time.[36]

Not long after moving back with her parents, Susanna met Tom Alderdice. On June 28, 1866, Susanna married Tom and then moved with him to their homestead along Spillman Creek, about thirty miles west of Salina.[37] Her parents soon

followed Susanna, settling a few miles away from her and Tom near present day Beverly, Kansas. As earlier mentioned, Susanna’s married life was interrupted with the enlistment of Tom and her seventeen-year-old brother Eli as scouts under Major Forsyth. And as it was with James Daily, Susanna was again pregnant and alone when her husband was away from home in military service. Both Tom and Eli survived the battle of Beecher Island, and by year's end had returned to the Saline valley, where they remained through the winter. It was shortly after Tom's return that Susanna became pregnant with her fifth child. This would have made her about five months pregnant when the May 30 raid occurred.

     On that fateful Sunday in May, Eli Zeigler and John Alverson were on their way to spend several days tending to an abandoned farmstead several miles north of the settlements along Spillman Creek. During their lunch with Susanna, she warned them to be careful, as there had been recent reports, which of course Michael Healy heeded, that the Indians were once again committing depredations north along the Solomon River homesteads.[38]

     The raid in Lincoln County began in the afternoon, with Eli and John likely being the first victims. Shortly after leaving Susanna, Eli and John noticed a man on horseback riding very fast to the west, from the vicinity of Lost Creek, probably not much more than a mile or so from the Michael Healy homestead. This mystery rider was traveling in the same direction as their intended destination, which was at least eight more miles to the northwest, crossing both Little Timber and Trail Creek before coming to Bacon Creek, where the abandoned claim was. According to Eli, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., but probably closer to 3 p.m. because of the distance traveled in a wagon since leaving Susanna, they finally crossed Trail Creek and were about half a mile north of its junction with Spillman Creek, where a small Danish settlement was located in what is now Denmark. Eli looked to the southwest across Spillman Creek and saw a party of between forty-five and sixty Indians marching on horseback, giving to him the appearance of being soldiers.

Spotting Eli and John in their wagon, the Indians turned the ponies in the direction of the wagon and rapidly advanced upon them, quickly overcoming the half-mile to mile distance between them. Realizing finally that the "soldiers" were actually Indians, Eli and John turned their wagon back towards Trail Creek, reaching the creek at about the same time the Indians reached them. Fleeing their wagon, Eli and John saw their only hope for survival in seeking shelter along the banks of Trail Creek. Thus secured, the Indians fired at the young men for only a few moments when the Indians decided instead to occupy themselves with the contents of the captured wagon.[39]

At the time the men saw the Indians turn towards them from across Spillman Creek, Eli also saw about fifteen other Indians turn to where Trail Creek joins Spillman Creek, and where the Danish settlement was located. The Indians who stayed for a bit where Eli and John were

entrenched soon left and joined the other Indians to the south. Eli and John had survived the beginning of the raid, but did not reach safety until the next morning.[40] It appears the rest of the raid occurred with these principal Indians at the start, but split up into small groups of from four to nine.

     It was at the Danish settlement at present day Denmark where the first citizens were killed. Eskild Lauritzen and his wife Stine were quickly overcome by the Indians. They had been out tending their garden and apparently did not realize the Indians were in the vicinity until too late to return to the safety of their home where they could have made a defense with any weapons they might have been armed with. Because Mrs. Lauritzen was also killed and not captured, some have speculated that Eskild killed his wife Stine rather than see her fall into Indian captivity.[41] If this is so then they must have been armed when confronted by the Indians. The Lauritzens were discovered dead the next day, stripped of their clothing and scalped. Their twelve-year old son had earlier visited at the Christensen home, which housed the families of brothers Petr and Lorentz Christensen, and their wives and Petr's three children.[42] A son of Petr, Hans, was the boy that the Lauritzen child was visiting at the time of the raid.[43] Eskild and Stine Lauritzen were apparently on their way to retrieve their son at the Christensen home when they were surprised by the Indians and killed. A houseguest of the Lauritzens, Otto Peterson, was also killed at this time. When found two days later some distance from where the Lauritzens were found the day before and perhaps on the other side of Spillman Creek,[44] Peterson had been scalped and horribly mutilated about the face.

The Indians next approached the Christensen family.

The Christensens were armed and, apparently hearing the attack upon the Lauritzens, had taken refuge in their home. The Indians tried to set the homestead on fire, but, after considerable effort and time, were unable to do so. They then traveled further south along Spillman Creek to continue their depredations. It is not known whether the Indians separated into smaller groups at the beginning of the raid, or if they all stayed together. It is possible they had separated into smaller groups of from four to nine. Regardless, shortly thereafter and in the same vicinity, about a dozen Indians came upon Fred Meigheroff and George and Maria Weichel.[45] Maria was described as being a beautiful woman twenty years of age. They were either a German or a Swiss family and had been in America just a few weeks when surprised by the Indians.[46] The Weichels, along with Fred, were also temporarily living with the Lauritzens.[47] The Weichels had been encouraged to take a homestead south of the Saline River near Bullfoot Creek, but had met the Lauritzens while visiting at the Schermerhorn ranch and were persuaded by them to move up Spillman Creek, taking their homestead there right before the deadly raid. Had they settled on Bullfoot Creek they likely would have survived the raid.[48] It is possible the Weichels were at their farmstead when the Indians surprised them. This would have been about one mile south of the Lauritzen homestead, along Spillman Creek as it flows towards the Saline. At any rate, being armed, Fred and George fought with the Indians as they apparently tried to flee to the south, probably for the Schermerhorn Ranch, a

fortified settlement often occupied by soldiers, and about equal distance further south and east from the Lauritzen homestead and where the Weichels were finally overtaken by the Indians. They were able to advance more than two and perhaps as far as three miles as they fought off the Indians. Finally, however, they ran out of ammunition and their hope for safety vanished. George and Fred were quickly killed and Maria taken captive.[49]

Where the Weichel’s chase came to an end was less than a half a mile north and west of where Susanna, with her four children along with Mr. and Mrs. Noon, Mr. and Mrs. Whalen, and Bridget Kine and her daughter, had been staying at the Michael Healey homestead, as mentioned earlier. However, it was not the gunfire from the northwest where Maria Weichel was captured and her husband and family friend killed that alerted the four families staying at the Healy house that Indians were in the vicinity. Rather, it was Bridget Kine looking towards her house, which was visible from the Healy house, when she heard her husband's black mare and young colt making noise.[50] When she looked to see why they were acting up she was startled to see a large force of Indians stealing the two horses. She momentarily lost awareness of her precarious danger within sight of the Dog Indians. Indeed, when she recovered her senses in a few moments she quickly discovered that she was without protection in the house, as the Whalens and Noons had already forged their escape from the Indians. Both families had left on horseback, quickly making their escape in the opposite direction from that of the Indians.[51] Unfortunately, however, this left Susanna and Mrs. Kine alone with their children and without any means of defense.[52] Safety had vanished by staying in the house. Believing their only hope for escape was to hide in the thick brush and trees alongside the Saline River, Bridget and Susanna with their children quickly left the Healy house and fled the quarter mile to where the Saline River flowed. About forty or sixty yards from the river Susanna realized the Indians had discovered her, and in a mournful plea to Mrs. Kine, asked for help for her and her children. Mrs. Kine replied that she could not help her and that she must save her own child.

At the last possible moment of escape Bridget reached the banks of the Saline, quickly waded through the water and hid herself on the other side in a clump of dogwood, holding her smiling two-month old baby in her arms.[53] Indians looked for her but were unable to find her. Mrs. Kine remained hidden near the river throughout the night and the next day was reunited with her husband at the Schermerhorn ranch.[54] It was reported years later that Mrs. Kine, while hiding, had heard the Indians speak fluent English while searching for her, saying that there should be two women instead of one. This led some people to say that perhaps some of the perpetrators were white horse thieves disguised as Indians, motivated to influence the Kansas settlers into another war against the Indians by having them blamed for the Spillman Creek outrage.[55]

Susanna, meantime, unable to reach the banks of the Saline with her children, no doubt carrying her two youngest in her arms, sat down on the ground and in sheer terror awaited the Indians to overtake her. Upon reaching her, the Indians were absolutely brutal to Susanna and her children. They shot and killed five year-old John, putting four bullets in his body. They put five arrows into two year-old Frank, then grabbed him by his heels and bashed his brains out on the ground. Four year-old Willis was hit with five arrows in his back, shot twice and also speared in the back. Somehow, amidst her screams the Indians permitted Susanna to keep eight months-old Alice. While tying her feet to a pony, other Indians stripped the three boys of their clothing and covered them in thick brush.[56]

The Indians were not through with their raid. They continued east along the Saline for about another mile when they turned to the south. It is not clear whether this last part of the raid occurred simultaneous to Susanna’s

capture or after, or whether it was the same party that committed the depredations against Susanna’s family or another party of Tall Bull’s Dog soldiers. Indeed, some time sequences have this next depredation occurring at about the same time as when the raid began in mid-afternoon.[57] Regardless, two Indians approached two boys, John Strange and Arthur Schmutz, both about fourteen years old. The Indians then said they were good Pawnee Indians,

causing the boys to relax their stance. Suddenly, one of the Indians, a boy of about the same age as the young settlers, took his war club and struck the Strange boy in the head, killing him instantly while thus breaking his war club. Strange only had time to utter the words "Oh Lordy" as he was struck. An arrow was then put into his head.

Arthur Schmutz then began to run but was struck by an arrow in his side. Though wounded, he continued to run and somehow managed to pull the shaft out, but leaving the metal arrow point stuck in his lung. After a short flight his two younger brothers, aged twelve and nine, hearing the commotion, came to his aid with a rifle and ammunition. The

Indian boy then retreated. Young Schmutz was soon taken to Fort Harker, where he died ten and a half weeks later. Unable to extract the arrow point from his lung, the metal eventually acted as a poison to him, slowly killing him.[58]

After these final killings, the Indians were said to have camped on the south side of the Saline River, along Bullfoot Creek, probably within a mile south and west of where Susanna was captured, which was about a quarter mile east of where Spillman Creek joins the Saline River.[59] The raiding was over around 6 p.m. The great irony here is that at about the same time the raid ended, G company of the 7^th Cavalry, out of Fort Harker and under the command of 1^st Lt. Edward Law, had arrived and set up camp on the north side of the Saline River near the mouth of Bullfoot Creek,

between two and three miles southwest from where Susanna was captured.[60] 2^nd Lt. T. J. March quickly learned of the raid along Spillman Creek and went with a detail of thirty men to pursue the Indians. George Green, a former Beecher Island scout who lived within a mile of Timothy Kine but was tending to business a few miles from his home when the

raid occurred, was with the soldiers, having been one of the first settlers to report the raid to the cavalry. He noted that the soldiers, after a chase of several miles, came upon several Indians in possession of the Kine mare and foal, along with four other horses belonging to Frank Schermerhorn.[61] The soldiers had searched a distance of fifteen miles, back over the area of the raid and then southwest, where they then came upon a few Indians resting these ponies. The Indians fled, however, when fired upon, taking with them the stolen horses. Darkness finally forced the cavalry to return to camp, where they arrived around midnight.[62] It appears from this fact, then, that the whole of the raiding Indians did not camp near the raided settlement, though it is possible a small party of Dog Soldiers did indeed camp near the soldier camp, as Eli Zeigler later said.[63]

Though the raid was now over, for Susanna, her sufferings were only beginning. As already noted, on the third day of her captivity, the Indians, annoyed with young

Alice’s crying, and probably also motivated with their malice towards Susanna, killed little Alice. Accounts from Maria Weichel, after her rescue at Summit Springs, say Alice was strangled and her limp body hung in a tree, or beheaded and her body parts thrown into a creek.[64] Major Carr indicated in his official report of the fight at Summit Springs that Alice was strangled on the third day of her captivity.[65] Hercules Price, who was at Summit Springs, years later said that Henry Voss, trumpeter of G Company, who was to later die next to Custer at the Little Bighorn,[66] acted as Maria’s interpreter, as she could not speak English. Voss, then, would have informed Carr of the account given in Carr's report. It seems likely then, that Alice did live for three days in captivity before she was killed. Regardless, either manner of murder was sufficiently horrible for Susanna to endure, even more so when one factors in what it must have taken for Susanna to

have prevented Alice's murder when her boys were murdered at her capture.

Susanna and Maria remained captives for six weeks, until July 11, when Major Carr, with seven companies of the

5^th Cavalry and one hundred-fifty Pawnee scouts and Buffalo Bill acting as Chief of Scouts, relentlessly searching for the Indians responsible for the Spillman Creek raid,

finally located them at Summit Springs, in northeastern Colorado. Between 2 and 3 p.m., Carr made his surprise charge into the village. He did not have available for duty

all of his command, due to exhaustion of the horses. Carr was however, able to muster for the attack two hundred forty-four officers and soldiers and fifty Pawnee Indians. Though there is doubt by some historians, in all probability Buffalo Bill was present at the beginning of the charge and participated in the fight.[67]

Tall Bull’s village of eighty-four teepees was completely surprised. The Indians had been pursued several days from the southeast and were not expecting Carr to be able to flank and surprise them, which he did when his attack originated from the northwest. Indeed, Tall Bull’s plan was to rest at Summit Springs until the next day, when he would then cross the South Platte River about twelve miles to the north of his Summit Springs camp. Had he done this he would have been able to escape into the vast regions of Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, making it much less likely that he could have been found. It was because of hard marching without the benefit of water for the horses that only about half of Carr’s force was able to participate in the opening of the fight. Leaving his camp on Frenchman's Fork at 5:30 a.m. that morning, by the time of the attack Carr had already marched his men a distance of thirty-five miles.[68]

Tall Bull’s Dog Soldier village was comprised of at least five hundred Indians, of which anywhere from two hundred to four hundred-fifty were warriors.[69] Carr's memoirs mention a village of four hundred warriors and at least seven hundred women and children.[70] The Indians were totally surprised by the attack. Carr had placed the three leading companies into two parallel columns and then charged a distance of over a mile, mostly in concealment behind two hills. Coming over the second hill the lead column of soldiers and Pawnee Indians were but about one hundred yards away from the village. The soldiers were so quickly upon the Indian village that the Dog Soldiers for the most part fled and put up little resistance. Tall Bull, along with nineteen other warriors, did make a final stand about a half-mile south and east from the village, where there was a deep set of bluffs or ravines. All died there after a short resistance.

Carr’s report notes that a total of fifty-two warriors were killed. Seventeen women and children were captured. Indian accounts reveal several dead women and children, most if not all of them killed by Pawnees.[71] Susanna was found at the southwest end of the village, near Tall Bull’s teepee. She had been tomahawked and shot above the eye.[72] Maria was nearby, wounded with a bullet that had passed through her body and lodged in the flesh of her left breast. The fight was over by 6 p.m.

Shortly after the fight ended and the Indian camp was secured by the military, a terrific hail and lightning storm proceeded to pound upon the village, forcing the soldiers to seek shelter in the captured lodges. The storm was so fierce that lightning struck and killed a horse while a soldier was sitting upon it. The soldier was unharmed. That night, while the storm was raging, Susanna was prepared for burial by surgeon Louis Tesson. Her captivity, along with Maria’s, had been a period of horrible brutality. According to Carr, both women had been repeatedly beaten and outraged, Maria becoming impregnated by the Indians.[73] One primary source account describes their condition as "pitiful beyond any power of mind to portray."[74]

At 8 a.m. the next morning, July 12, amid clear skies, Susanna was buried "in the midst of the village" near where she had been found dying the day before.[75] Wrapped in a buffalo robe and two lodge skins, a burial service was read over her grave and she was given a formal military salute. A deep grave had been dug in which she was buried. Carr’s report says "A headboard marks the grave with an inscription stating that we knew of her." [76] Her grave today is unmarked.

 The goods discovered in the village were enormous.

Among things inventoried were the following: dozens of

rifles and revolvers, seventeen sabers, six hundred ninety

buffalo robes, three hundred sixty-one saddles, sixty-seven brass/iron camp kettles, ten tons of various Indian property, and numerous articles stolen from pioneers during the vicious Indian raids. Gruesome among the Indian goods was a necklace made of white human fingers. When Maria was captured she witnessed the Indians cutting off her husband’s finger. She believed it was to take the ring from his finger. Perhaps his finger was cut to add to a necklace. The ring was found in the village and given back to Maria at her rescue.[77] Carr ordered the village to be destroyed. The next morning no less than one hundred-sixty fires were simultaneously burning, necessary in order to destroy the captured property to keep it from falling back into Indian hands.

Susanna's sad murder at Susanna Springs is not, however, the end of her story. Within this horrible family tragedy, there is an amazing, nearly unbelievable story of human triumph. For the day after the raid on Spillman Creek, May 31, some citizens, accompanying soldiers of Company G of the 7^th Cavalry, retracing the path of the raid, came upon where Susanna had been captured and her boys killed.[78] A soldier moving about thick brush, discovered the hidden dead boys, each covered in the brush and stripped naked.[79] Four year-old Willis, however, lying next to his dead brothers, was unconscious but still alive! Four of the metal arrow points, lodged in various places in his back, were easily removed. One arrow, however, struck him with such force that it would have inevitably traveled through his little body except that it struck the gristle of his breastbone (i.e., the sternum), where it was lodged, fully five inches deep.[80] Citizens were unable to remove it until they applied a bullet mold used in the form of pliers.[81] Willis survived and was raised by Susanna’s parents, Michael and Mary Zeigler.

As of 1910, when Christian Bernhardt published his Indian Raids in Lincoln County, Kansas, 1864 and 1869, all that was known of Willis Daily was that he had recovered and was living in Blue Rapids, Kansas, north of Manhattan. Now, however, the rest of the Willis Daily story can be told. Willis received a pension from his father's military service until he reached sixteen years of age.[82] He walked with a limp in his left leg the remainder of his life.[83] On March 25, 1886 he married Mary Twibell. Together they had three children, James, Anna and Elsie. In 1893 he moved with his family to Marshall County, four miles east of Blue Rapids, where Willis remained until he died in his home on June 16, 1920. For the last three years of his life he suffered greatly from a sarcoma tumor.[84] After his death Willis was brought back to Lincoln County and buried in the Spillman Cemetery in Ash Grove, next to the graves of his wife's parents. His family believed his cancer might have been related to his Indian wounds of 1869.[85]

Willis’s son, James Alfred Daily, who was named after

Willis's father, died in Denver in 1954. Willis’s daughter

Anna married Bill Waters and eventually moved to California. Elsie married Jake Horton and had a daughter, Berniece, and a son, Gene. Berniece grew up and wed Wilbert Henry Graepler. They raised their family of five children in Arizona.

When Willis died in 1920, seven cemetery plots were purchased at the Spillman Cemetery for Willis's family. When Mary Daily died in 1948, she was buried in the plot next to where Willis rests. The other five plots have remained unused. If Susanna’s unmarked grave can be located at Summit Springs it would be possible for Susanna to be brought out of her Indian captivity and reburied next to her son Willis. Willis’s two brothers killed when he was himself wounded were later buried on their grandfather’s section of land near Lincoln. There is the further possibility that these unmarked graves can also be located and removed to rest next to Willis and their mother at Spillman Cemetery.

Libbie Custer’s account of her anguishing interview with an unknown "distracted man" during a brief visit to Ft. Leavenworth has now been filled in. That sad June day in Libbie's life in 1869 was marked by a heart-wrenching conversation with Tom Alderdice, an encounter that haunted Libbie and remained in her memory, no doubt, the rest of her life. Susanna’s sad story, though, has an amazing story of survival in the life of her young son, Willis. Today, one hundred thirty-three years later, Susanna’s blood continues to flow and remains warm in the descendants of Willis Daily.