During her captivity, her suffering was immense. However, if anxious readers of other “captivity narratives” expected to find multiple gruesome descriptions of the degradation she suffered, they may well have been disappointed. Her telling does not deliver the tabloid spectacle readers a century ago—or even today—might have expected or still expect. Not only does her story not indulge in sensational details, it takes odd turns into unexpected lyrical descriptions of time and place, descriptions that seem created by someone unaffected by the suffering she was going through.
When Inkpaduta ran from the white men he knew would come after him, he went north and west to open country and arrived at the eastern banks of the Big Sioux River, near what is Flandreau, South Dakota, today. The orphaned Abbie Gardner, clearly taken by the landscape around her; seems unperturbed by the fact that each day, each hour, takes her farther and farther west, away from safety and farther into the wilderness:
The natural scenery along the Big Sioux is grand and beautiful. From the summit of the bluffs, the eye can view thousands of acres of richest vale and undulating prairie; while through it, winding along like a monstrous serpent, is the river, its banks fringed with maple, oak, and elm.
She understands that this bit of reverie is out of place, so she adds what needs to be said: “But alas, how could we! The helpless captives of these inhuman savages could see no beauties in nature or pleasures in life.”
While the band and its captives are at this very spot on the Big Sioux River, she describes the fate of four women taken captive during the Spirit Lake Massacre: two were “sold,” then released; the other two were murdered. One, 19-year-old Elizabeth Thatcher, who was pregnant, sensed real danger and whispered to Abbie to tell her husband, should she die, that she loved him. That day, Elizabeth was beaten to death while struggling to stay afloat in the Big Sioux. Abbie watched her being tortured, then murdered by killers who made a game of her dying. When Elizabeth swam against the current and made it back to shore, her tormentors did not let her get out of the water:
She was here met by some of the other Indians, who were just coming upon the scene; they commenced throwing clubs at her, and with long poles shoved her back into the angry stream. As if nerved by fear, or dread of such a death, she made another desperate effort for life, and doubtless would have gained the opposite shore; but here again she was met by her merciless tormentors and was beaten off as before. She was then carried down by the furious, boiling current of the Sioux; while the Indians on the other side of the stream were running along the banks, whooping and yelling, and throwing sticks and stones at her, until she reached another bridge. Here she was finally shot by one of the Indians in another division of the band, who was crossing with the other two captives, some distance below.
Monday--Abbie's own odd telling of the story
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