News: Colby (30 Jan 1883)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt
Email: bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
 
----Source: The Abbotsford Tribune - Phonograph (Abbotsford, WI) 01/30/2013

Originally published in the Colby Phonograph, January 30, 1883

There has been a great deal in the papers lately about an Indian fight that occurred, or is said to have occurred, in the town of Hull.

Sometime about the first of December, a report was current that an Indian fight had occurred about five miles east of this place, that one or two Indians had been seriously injured and several ponies killed.

We made diligent inquiry among the residents of that portion of the town but could learn nothing in regard to the matter; no one had seen any fight, any dead Indians or ponies.

Being unable to lean anything from the citizens, we hunted up some of the Indians, who were surprised, in fact thunderstruck, to think there had been a fight and they know nothing of it.

Since that time the story has been rolling along, gathering strength as it went, until the latest reports, coming to us from the outside world, makes it equal of some of the ructions of years ago.

The first account involved the Winnebago’s and Menominee’s, then came an account wherein the Chippewa’s and Potawatomie’s were concerned, and now we have before us an article that tells of a terrible fight in which all four tribes were interested, a great many Indians were killed and the slaughter of ponies was terrible.

The article in question winds up by calling upon the authorities of Marathon County to investigate the matter.

The truth is there is nothing to investigate. There has been no fight among the Indians, not even a semblance of a fight; the whole thing is an emanation from some fertile brain and was, we have no doubt, started for the purpose of intimidating some weak-minded person.