Fanny Kelly Reveals What Happened During the Sioux Sun Dance and Her Captivity

In July 1864, a newly married Kansas woman watched her wagon party come apart near Little Box Elder Creek and was carried off by the Oglala and Brulé Sioux. She was one of the few white women of her time to see what she saw up close.

Fanny Kelly rode out of Kansas with her husband Josiah and her adopted daughter Mary, chasing cheap land in the West. When the attack scattered the party, she lowered seven-year-old Mary into the tall grass and told her to run. Fanny spent roughly five months among the Oglala, scraping hides, hauling water, and digging turnips, kept alive because a captive who worked was worth more than one who did not, and resented by some who saw a rival where she saw only survival.

As thousands of Sioux gathered, she was carried to a Sun Dance and watched young men fast, pierce their chests, and hang from the center pole until the skin tore free. Word of a captive white woman moved between the bands and the army through failed handoffs and one near-fatal trap, until a Blackfoot Sioux escort delivered her to Fort Sully in December 1864. She came back without Mary and without her old life, and later set the names, dates, and the ceremony down on the page.