Wiseman massacre

In 1862, the children's father, Henson Wiseman, a native of what is now West Virginia, enlisted in Company I, of the 2nd Nebraska Cavalry. In the spring of 1863, the 2nd was first posted at Fort Randall before being ordered upriver by steamboat to Fort Berthold, to join an Army Expeditionary Force under the command of General Alfred Sully. Their orders were to pursue an estimated 700 renegade Santee Sioux who left their reservation in Minnesota and went on a rampage down the Minnesota River, burning farms and torturing and/or killing an estimated 1,000 white settlers before the hastily activated Minnesota militia blocked their southward progress at New Ulm and the renegades struck west into Dakota Territory, intending to return to their traditional buffalo hunting grounds along the Missouri River. President Lincoln ordered the Union Army to pursue the renegades and bring them to justice. In light of the atrocities that had already occurred in Minnesota and with the renegades having reached Dakota Territory, settlers living in Nebraska's Dixon and Cedar counties expressed considerable concern to military authorities that the absence of their men would leave their families vulnerable to Santee attack. Army authorities reassured them that soldiers would be posted to patrol the south bank of the Missouri River to guard the families and their property.

The children's mother, Phoebe Cross Wiseman, left their home on July 21 to purchase supplies in the town of Yankton. Phoebe walked to the nearby village of St. James, approximately 5 miles from her home, and rode the stage to Elm Grove, which was across the Missouri River from Yankton. She spent the night at the George Hall residence and the next morning crossed the river to Yankton, made her purchases, and returned to Elm grove in the evening. That night she stayed with Mrs. Amos Parker to rest for the journey back to her home. Phoebe returned to St. James by stage and was delayed on her way home by a thunderstorm. When she was approaching the home, she stopped to rest and was shocked that neither the children nor the family dog was coming to greet her. When Phoebe came close to the home, she saw books on the ground in front of the home and then noticed blood on the door latch. As she ran to the door, she tripped over the body of her 8-year-old son, William "Henry" Wiseman. When she opened the door to the home, she saw the remnants of an apparent struggle and heard groaning and rustling on the floor. Frightened, thinking it was natives, Phoebe fled the scene and returned to St. James. The men of the town refused to return to the scene until the following day.

When they arrived, they saw Henry lying in the front yard shot in the back, just as his mother said. The men also heard groaning, but it was from two of the children that were still alive. Hannah was lying in the hall and had been shot in the mouth. She had also been raped with arrows that penetrated her vaginal area and came out through her hips. Hannah lived five days, the longest of the two surviving children, but never spoke and slipped in and out of consciousness. Andrew lay dead on the floor next to his older brother Arthur. Arthur lay on the floor with gun in hand. The gun barrel was bent and the stock shattered. Loren was found sitting on the bed, grasping the bed post. He had been stabbed in the lung and requested water. When asked who did this, he replied, "Indians". Loren lived for three days before succumbing to his injuries.

Based on evidence of shoes stolen from the massacre site, four renegade Santee natives were thought to be responsible, although this was never proven. Members of the Yankton Band of Sioux may also have perpetrated the tragedy. When news of the tragedy reached Henson, then 200 miles north in Dakota Territory, he immediately returned home. Sergeant John Hewitt of E Company, 6th Iowa Cavalry--then at Fort Randall with his regiment preparing for transfer upriver--recorded in his diary that a soldier of the 2nd Nebraska had passed through on his way home, where his family had been massacred, having ridden non-stop all the way. When Henson arrived, he found Phoebe inconsolable. He removed her and their surviving children--except 18-year-old John Wiseman, then in the Union Army fighting Confederates in the South--to Virginia, where they remained for the next few years. When the Wiseman's were notified that they owed back taxes on their Cedar County homestead and were in jeopardy of losing it, they returned to Nebraska.

It is said that Henson vowed to kill every "Indian" he saw for the rest of his life. And he was suspected of tracking and killing Native Americans up and down river. According to one Cedar County version, Wiseman sometimes perched atop a high bluff overlooking the river at Present-day Ponca State Park, where he would randomly shoot Native Americans traversing the river in canoes with a high powered buffalo rifle, and that the empty canoes often washed up on shore near Sioux City. Henson Wiseman lived to the age of 94 and died on February 19, 1912.[4]