In the summer of 1864 Fanny Kelly* was a 20 year old newly minted bride heading west towards Idaho from her home in Geneva, Kansas. Accompanying her were her husband of 7 months, Josiah, her adopted daughter, Mary, another family, a single minister, and two hired men. Because they were a small band they made great progress. Because they were a small band they were particularly vulnerable. 1864 was a bad year for relations between whites and the Sioux. During the past winter, the Santee Sioux rose up in Minnesota and massacred hundreds of whites. Thirty-eight captured Sioux warriors were hung simultaneously, in America’s largest mass-execution to date. Shortly before dusk on July 12, as Fanny Kelly’s wagon train was camped near Little Box Elder Creek in Wyoming, Chief Ottawa and a large band of Oglala Sioux descended upon them. They demanded to be fed. As food was being prepared, they attacked, killing three men, wounding two others, and carrying the two women and two children off as captives.

That first night the other woman, Sarah Larimer, and her son managed to escape. Chief Ottawa had claimed Fanny as his own, and closer watch was placed upon her. Mary, her adopted daughter, the orphaned child of Fanny’s sister, was 7years old. Fanny, fearing the fate they faced, and feeling that Mary was just old enough to survive an escape, formulated a plan. She had some letters tucked away in her skirt when they were taken, and had been tearing off pieces of paper, letting them fall to the ground as a trail for the trackers to follow. As they rode into a moonless night, she told Mary to slide silently off the horse, lay flat until the group had well passed, then run in the opposite direction, and keep running until she got back to the trail - when there, she should stay hidden until she saw soldiers, or other whites.

This little Mary did. She made it back to the trail, and soon three soldiers from Deer Creek Station came riding by. When Mary ran out, calling for their help, they thought she was a decoy, and, fearing ambush, rode back to post. Josiah Kelley had made his way to the post to get help recovering his wife. When the three soldiers came back to report they had seen a lone girl on the trail, Josiah knew it was his own Mary, and pleaded for a squad to go out to fetch her. The post commander delayed, and when they found Mary she was laying face down on the trail. There were four arrows in her back. She had been scalped and partially stripped.

Fanny would not know the details of this story until after her rescue, many months later, at For Sully. But she did learn of her daughter’s death in the most horrible of ways. One day, as she and her captors were making their way to the Black Hills, a Sioux warrior rode up next to her. Hanging from his saddle was a familiar white shawl, and a scalp of long, golden hair Fanny immediately recognized. She had a breakdown, falling from her horse in delirium. When revived, the Sioux warrior and his horse were gone, and she was only able to go on by convincing herself that she just imagined she saw Mary’s shawl and scalp. After being reunited with her husband in December, she learned the true story.

There are so many thoughts this story elicits. There is the cost of it all – the price paid for anything we consider progress. There is irony of it all – the way fate seems to arrange true life so that it is stranger than any fiction. There is the injustice of it all – the way women and children seem to bear the bunt of history, when men behave impulsively and irrationally. There is the frustration of it all – salvation is so close, but so far away.

These lessons of history are lessons of the Bible as well: “knowing you were redeemed…with precious blood” (1 Peter 1:17), “what would a man give in exchange for his soul?”(Mark 8:37), “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…time and chance happen to all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11), “Do you think, so quickly, to make me a Christian” (Acts 26:28). But the thing that seems the most compelling to me is the way Fanny formulated a plan, and the plan worked, and Mary was killed anyway.

As a father of daughters I am, perhaps, unduly affected by these kinds of accounts. We plan, and save, and work, and invest, and borrow, and pray and pray and pray for our kids. So much in life can happen. God doesn’t promise it won’t happen. What is most important (more important even than knowing our children are safe) is knowing our children are saved. Teresa and I received our greatest blessing 7 years ago when our youngest was baptized – and we know that all three of our daughters were God’s as well.

Fanny Kelly felt this way. Mary Kelly’s shawl, hanging from the neck of a Sioux warrior’s pony communicated that she had died – it also communicated that she lived. Fanny writes:

Well said, and true.