"Nancy McClure was a Dakota who worked against the Dakota uprising, and who sided cautiously with her white neighbors." -Oberg, Native America: A History (2015)
"McClure's account conveys how difficult the war became for mixed-bloods who were captives." – Anderson, Through Dakota Eyes (2010)
The stories of those pioneers who have escaped from captivity among Native American tribes during hostile outbreaks along frontier settlements are full of harrowing interest, and one of the most intriguing is that told by Nancy McClure who happened to be of mixed white and Sioux heritage.
During Minnesota's "Sioux Outbreak" of August 1862, Nancy McClure (1836-1927) lived two miles from the Redwood agency, on the road to Fort Ridgely in a log cabin on a small farm. Unfortunately, the Redwood agency, Fort Ridgely, and any settlers in the vicinty were directly in the path of Chief Little Crow's war parties which swept through the Minnesota River Valley and near vicinity, carrying away any spared settlers as captives.
In describing her panicky attempt to escape when a Sioux war party had been spotted heading toward their farm, McClure writes:
"Woman-like, I tried first to save my jewelry, which I kept in a strong drawer. This drawer was swelled and I could not open it, and I was running for an ax to burst it, when nay husband said, 'Let it go they are ready to start.' So I took my dear little daughter, who was eight years old and my only child, and we started for the wagon. Just as I was about to get in everybody else was in I looked up the road toward the agency and saw the Indians coming. I was afraid they would overtake the wagon; so I declined to get in, and my husband got out with me, and we took our child and ran for the woods...."
In 1894, McClure wrote a series of letters to a St. Paul journalist describing her life as an Indian captive, which were published in the Minnesota Historical Collections under the title: "The Story of Nancy McClure, Captivity Among the Sioux." [See Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. VI, 1894] It is this 20-page work that has been republished here for the convenience of the interested reader.
