"Lavina Eastlick's story is one episode in the history of the bloodiest massacre of the West." - Captured by the Indians (1985)
"The resolute mother, badly wounded and left for dead, revived...and with sublime courage started for a place of safety." -A Thrilling Narrative of the Minnesota Massacre (1896)
"Eastlick's story is seen by whites as the prototypical heroic story of a woman during the war." - Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees (2002)
"John Eastlick handed his wife a large butcher's knife and told her not to hesitate to use it if necessary." -Over The Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 (1993)
How did this heroic Minnesota pioneer woman survive four musket ball wounds and being beaten and left for dead, to eventually reunite with her two surviving children after a harrowing journey?
In 1864, Lake Shetek Massacre survivor Lavina Day Eastlick (1833-1923) would publish a chilling first-hand narrative of her fight for survival in her book titled "Thrilling Incidents of the Indian War of 1862: Being a Personal Narrative of the Outrages and Horrors Witnessed by Mrs. L. Eastlick in Minnesota."
In what would eventually be known as the Lake Shetek Massacre, on August 20, 1862, about 40 Dakota Sioux men and at least one woman attacked Minnesota settlers living nearby, killing 15 and taking a dozen women and children captive.
In introducing her book, Eastlick writes:
"I have given merely a plain, unvarnished statement of all the facts that came under my own observation, during the dreadful massacre of the settlers in Minnesota. Mine was only a single case among hundreds of similar instances. It is only from explicit and minute accounts from the pen of the sufferers themselves, that people living at this distance from the scene of those atrocities can arrive at any just and adequate conception of the...the extremities of pain, terror and distress endured by the victims."
Interestingly, Eastlick describes a paranormal encounter that occurred right after the attack:
"As I was going along I saw a light about two feet in length, and one and a half in breadth; it was a pale red light, and seemed to float along just above the grass, at the distance of about forty rods from me. It went entirely around me, some three or four times, or perhaps more, for I did not count. It first appeared on the right hand side, going around before me; it soon moved very swiftly. I thought at first it might be an Indian, but soon saw that no Indian, or even horse, could move with such rapidity. What it was, or what was the meaning of it, I do not know, but it was very mysterious."
