White Dog (Shoonkaska)

Among the condemned there were several whom I had known in years gone by.  It was in my house at Fort Ridgely and in the home of that fine interpreter named Quinn where I had met and often seen them.  Particularly two of them I knew very well.  White Dog, a young Indian of splendid physique, about 24 years of age, and an older Redskin of about 45.  I had seen them a number of times.  White Dog, by the way, was an Indian Don Juan, of whom they said at that time, that he did not merely "turn the heads" of young Indian maidens, but that he had succeeded with a number of white women as well.  Furthermore, he was really a wild fellow.  When he could secure fire-water by paying ten times its price to some white scoundrel, he became so awfully drunk, that he was placed in a dark hole of the main guard quarters of the Fort more often than he liked.  He was them, as might be expected, one of the greatest scoundrels among all the other red scoundrels during the time of the Indian uprising.  That he, who was otherwise a sly Indian, should be caught in the trap at Camp Release and give himself up to General Sibley in the hope of receiving a pardon can only be attributed to the fact that he had a love affair with a white woman who had been taken captive by the Indians.  She had assured him that her influence and her testimony would certainly free him.  But the lady was mistaken.  The shameful atrocities of the red scoundrel were so definitely proved to him that all the pleading, wringing of hands, and the tears of this white woman could not save him from the gallows. [Jacob Nix, The Sioux Uprising in Minnesota: Jacob Nix's Eyewitness History]

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