A MASSACRE 133 



hurling themselves against the posts, knocked and 

 trampled the men down until from their commanding 

 officer himself to the last man not one was left 

 standing upright. They were simply trampled and 

 suffocated to death, while the Indians, yelling and 

 smelling, but still keeping warily at a considerable 

 distance, rushed furiously round and round, until, 

 satisfied that they had nothing to fear, they came 

 and opened the gate and let the horses out. Then, 

 dismounting, they rushed in and began prodding the 

 prostrate men with their lances, and stripping them 

 of their ponchos and any valuables they possessed. 

 But they were in a mighty hurry to get away with 

 their booty, and of the two hundred men there was 

 one survivor one poor wretch who, lying with an- 

 other man over him, had remained conscious all the 

 time. Now when some of the Indians came to where 

 he was lying they inflicted a spear-thrust in his body, 

 but did not see that they had not finished killing 

 him. Some time after they had left he succeeded in 

 crawling out, and later that day another troop of 

 soldiers in pursuit of the Indians came on the scene 

 and rescued him. It was this man who gave a full 

 account of what had happened; it was, however, 

 but a small incident, one of ten thousand little 

 frontier tragedies, and not of importance enough to 

 find a place in any local history. 



The reason that it profoundly impressed us in my 

 boyhood's home was that the commanding officer 

 who made the fatal mistake of placing his men inside 

 instead of outside of the corral was known personally 



