Men shouting, “Search the reeds!” Shots echoing across the lake. The high, sharp cry of a baby suddenly cut off. Ice cracking under soldiers’ boots.
At one point, a rifle barrel stabbed into the riverbank just inches from her face. Mud fell into her hands. She pressed deeper into the den, chest tight, breath shallow.
Hours passed. When silence finally settled over the lake, she crawled out, shaking, soaked, half frozen. The marsh was destroyed. Bodies lay partially buried in snow. Only a handful of survivors hid in the cattails.
Her mother was gone, taken or killed. But White Light found two younger children still alive and carried them toward the tree line.
They walked for miles through frozen prairie until they reached Dakota families who had escaped earlier and were living in makeshift shelters along the Missouri River.
White Light survived the winter. She grew into an elder known for her resilience, often telling her grandchildren: “The beaver saved me. The river remembered.”
Today, historians acknowledge multiple militia attacks on Dakota refugee groups after the 1862 war, events rarely included in textbooks but preserved through survivor memories like hers.
