Scenes of loving care and tenderness were emblazoned on my mind. Scenes
of anguish, pain, and dire distress were branded on my brain during
days, weeks, and months of famine,--famine which reduced the party from
eighty-one souls to forty-five survivors, before the heroic relief men
from the settlements could accomplish their mission of humanity.
Who better than survivors knew the heart-rending circumstances of life
and death in those mountain camps? Yet who can wonder that tenderest
recollections and keenest heartaches silenced their quivering lips for
many years; and left opportunities for false and sensational details to
be spread by morbid collectors of food for excitable brains, and for
prolific historians who too readily accepted exaggerated and
unauthentic versions as true statements?
Who can wonder at my indignation and grief in little girlhood, when I
was told of acts of brutality, inhumanity, and cannibalism, attributed
to those starved parents, who in life had shared their last morsels of
food with helpless companions?
Who can wonder that I then resolved that, "When I grow to be a woman I
shall tell the story of my party so clearly that no one can doubt its
truth"? Who can doubt that my resolve has been ever kept fresh in mind,
by eager research for verification and by diligent communication with
older survivors, and rescuers sent to our relief, who answered my many
questions and cleared my obscure points?
And now, when blessed with the sunshine of peace and happiness, I am
finishing my work of filial love and duty to my party and the State of
my adoption, who can wonder that I find on my chain of remembrance
countless names marked, "forget me not"? Among the many to whom I
became greatly indebted in my young womanhood for valuable data and
gracious encouragement in my researches are General William Tecumseh
Sherman, General John A.
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