| Notes |
- Wells, Philip Faribault
Papers, 1866-1891. Wells was born in Minnesota in 1851, and his mother was a Santee Sioux Indian. He spent his youth developing a proficiency in several languages, including French and Sioux. He later served as chief interpreter and guide for the Army during the Messiah War and was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
This collection consists of a manuscript on the Fetterman Massacre, which was based on interviews with Red Cloud in 1887 and Jim Bridger in 1872. Another manuscript details Wells's recollections of the Messiah War. This manuscript formed part of Wells's article, "Ninety Six Years Among the Indians of the Northwest," which appeared in North Dakota History in 1948.
Philip Wells: Wounded at Wounded Knee
Wild West | Published: June 12, 2006 at 8:00 pm
"The first time Sioux warriors had left Philip Wells bleeding had been more than 25 years earlier, on August 17, 1864, when he was 13. Although renegade bands of Sioux had continued to roam after the Minnesota Uprising of 1862, Philip's bear of a father, nicknamed Bully by white settlers and the Fox by the Santee Sioux, had little fear. It was said he never met his match in muscle or daring. Leaving his half-blood wife and their home in Fairbault, Minn., James Wells took his three sons - Aaron, 11, Wallace, 17, and Philip - and a Santee ward named George and his wife to explore a possible move to the Black Hills. Minnesota was too crowded.
West of Spirit Lake, Iowa, the group separated to hunt. Philip and George's wife were alone in camp on the Floyd River when they were attacked by a Sioux war party. George's wife screamed and fell, severely wounded. Philip, shot in the left arm and leg, ran from the camp and threw himself down in some tall grass. He watched an Indian coming straight toward him and debated. Should he beg for his life? Or stand up and offer to die like a man, perhaps winning the brave's admiration? Before he could decide, the brave turned away.
Not daring to move, he lay hidden through the night. About dawn he heard little brother Aaron's voice calling and crying. Fearing the Indians held Aaron and were making him call, Philip did not dare answer. Sometime later he saw movement in the trees. It was Wallace and George, knowing nothing of what had happened, finally returning to camp. About the same time, Aaron stumbled in with a bitter story. Their seemingly invincible father was dead. Taken captive, Aaron had been helped to escape by a sympathetic Indian. Since then he'd been running for his life. After finding and burying their father's body, the shattered group started home.
For five days, afraid to light a fire, they existed on raw game. Traveling by night and hiding by day, pushing and pulling a teamless wagon, they reached Spirit Lake in about 10 days. There they found their first bit of luck: Their ox team had made its way to the settlement, and two of their mules had been found in the woods nearby. They moved on north into Minnesota, where George's wife died. The boys grieved for her, whom they had loved as a member of the family. Still 75 miles from home, with Philip's wounds starting to throb, Wallace and George took the mules and the woman's body and drove for Fairbault to get help. Philip and Aaron followed with the oxen, Philip's head swimming with fever, his swollen leg shooting pain with every jolt. By the time Wallace reappeared, the delirious boy was in serious shape. Their appearance in town, skeletal and scarcely recognizable, became a local legend. Townsfolk had known Bully Wells trained his boys to be tough, but the month-long trek still inspired awe.
By now the heavy gunfire on Wounded Knee Creek was dwindling away. His face and heavy mustache still dripping blood, Wells pulled impatiently away from the surgeon and went to help where he could. Then he hurried to the piles of wounded and dead in the council area. Big Foot was sprawled beside the wounded Joseph Horned Cloud. Big Foot's daughter, shot in the back, had fallen across her father. Tents still blazed, and the acrid smell of gun smoke hung in the air. Moving among the pile of some 30 motionless bodies, Wells called out, White people are merciful to save the wounded enemy when he is harmless; so, if some of you are alive, raise your heads; I am a man of your own blood who is talking to you.
It was true. His mother had been half Santee, and had never spoken English. His uncle was a half blood, also married to a Santee. Philip had virtually no formal schooling, but possessed an ear for languages. As a child he interpreted German and French for his white neighbors and Ojibway and Winnebago among their Indian friends. He left home at 15 to roam the West and was soon fluent in the Sioux dialects. Although he was only one-quarter Sioux, that part of his heritage dominated his life. He had lived among the Sioux since 1875, serving on the reservations as a hay contractor, interpreter, farmer and assistant clerk. In 1876 he enlisted as an Army scout and interpreter. He had interpreted for and counseled the Sioux on some of their darkest days - when Crazy Horse had been killed at Fort Robinson that year, when a despondent Sitting Bull had submitted to reservation life in 1881, when they had ridden down the last buffalo herd in 1883. He looked more white than Indian, with his dark, drooping mustache, but his heart was Sioux, and they knew him as a brother.
At his words, a dozen heads raised from the pile of dead and wounded. One man lifted himself on his elbow and asked, Are you the man they call 'the Fox?' Wells, who had inherited the name from his father, assured him he was. Asked to come closer, Wells suspected a trick and kept his rifle ready. But the man said, Who is that man lying there half burnt? motioning to a smoldering corpse of a Sioux man the Army had burned out of a tent after he had used its cover to kill several soldiers. Wells said he was a medicine man. Raising his closed fist at the body, the Indian shot out his fingers and cursed the corpse. I am sorry I cannot do more to you, he hissed at the Ghost Dancer. If I could be taken to you, I would stab you! Turning back to Wells, he said: He is our murderer! Only for him inciting our other young men we would have been alive and happy!
The troopers were filling wagons with wounded. Wells moved up the ravine, following the people who had fled, only to be blasted by the exploding shells of Hotchkiss guns. Again he called for them to come out. As he helped an old wounded woman, she told him: The treacherous ones are of Big Foot's band. The medicine men tried constantly to incite the others….Some of us meant peace when we raised the white flag, but trouble came anyhow.
Wells had watched with sad eyes as the Ghost Dance fever sparked, burned and blazed from west to east and finally from south to north across the Sioux lands (see Ghost Dancers' Last Stand in the June 1993 Wild West). Increasingly upset by their shrinking reservations, the Sioux realized in 1888 that their sacred Black Hills were gone. Then the government took 11 million acres of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1889, manipulating signature requirements and promising that ration levels would be maintained. Soon after, rations were reduced by half a million pounds. Attempts to farm arid, unsuitable land brought pitiful returns. The few crops that got started burned up in the fields when June turned into July and August and the Dakota sun became a searing ball of fire. With game nearly nonexistent, the people faced starvation."
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1850 - 1947 (96 years)
