These Indians were taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Here, they were confined as prisoners of war, and held subject to the orders of the Department of the Interior. The department was informed of the Indians' determination never to be taken The army back alive to Indian Territory. reiterated these officers in charge statements, and implored the department to permit them to remain at the North but it was of no avail. Orders came explicit, repeated, finally stern insisting on the return of these Indians to their agency. The commanding Fort Robinson has been censured severely for the course he pursued in his effort to carry out those orders. It officer at is difficult to see what resigned his post. he could have done, except to have could not take three hundred Indians else He by sheer brute force and carry them hundreds of miles, especially when they were so desperate that they had broken up the iron stoves in their quarters, and wrought and twisted them into weapons with which to resist. he could starve them into submission. He thought perhaps He stopped the issue of food; he also stopped the issue of fuel to them. It was midwinter; the mercury froze in that month at Fort Robin At the end of two days he asked the Indians to let their son.
women and children come woman would come out. a out that he might feed them. Not On the night of the fourth day according to some accounts, the sixth these starving, freezing Indians broke prison, overpowered the guards, and fled, carrying their women and children with them. They held the or, pursuing troops at bay for several days stand in a deep ravine, and were shot down
children together.
Out
of the whole
finally
made
a last
men, women, and band there were left alive some fifty women and children and seven men, who, having been confined in another part of the fort, had not had the good fortune to .share in this outbreak and meet their death in the ravine. These, with their wives and children, were sent to Fort Leaven worth, to be put in prison
the men to be tried for mur-