At the agency, Abbie was presented, in the name of Dakota Chief Matowaken, with a beautiful Indian ‘war cap’ that had been secretly transported from the village on the James River.

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Each feather represented an enemy that the chief had killed in battle, and it symbolized Abbie’s bravery during her captivity. While she retained the cap, it was supposed to place her under the protection of the Dakotas.

Abbie was escorted by a wagon driver, an interpreter and her three Indian rescuers down the Minnesota River to Fort Ridgely, where Captain Barnard Elliot Bee Jr. and his wife prepared dinner for them. Mrs. Bee gave Abbie several gold dollars, and Lieutenant Alexander Murray bought her a shawl and material for a dress. At the head of navigation at Traverse, they boarded a steamboat for the trip to St. Paul, where they docked on June 22, 1857. The following morning, the Indians officially delivered her to Governor Samuel Medary with much pomp and circumstance. The people of St. Paul presented her with $500, which she deposited in a St. Paul bank.

From St. Paul, Abbie, Governor Medary and his entourage took a steamboat for Dubuque, Iowa, where she debarked and traveled overland to Fort Dodge. There she waited to be picked up by her newlywed sister Eliza’s husband, William Wilson, of Hampton, Iowa. She reached her sister’s home on July 5. In Hampton, Abbie delivered to Elizabeth Thatcher’s parents the final message Elizabeth had entrusted to Abbie just moments before her death. Things happened quickly for Abbie, mature beyond her actual 13 years. On August 16, 1857, she married 19-year-old Casville Sharp, a cousin of Elizabeth Thatcher.

About a year and a half later, Abbie returned to the house where her family was massacred and discovered that J.S. Prescott occupied the cabin. He reimbursed her only a small percentage of what the property was worth. In 1859 Abbie and Casville had a baby boy, Albert, and in 1862, a second son, Allen. In 1871 daughter Minnie was born, but she died at age 19 months. The Sharps moved to several locations in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas. Twice, house fires destroyed the family’s possessions, and one of them consumed an early version of Abbie’s Spirit Lake manuscript. In the late 1870s, the Sharps’ marriage failed. In 1883 Abbie returned to the area of the Okoboji lakes and made money by soliciting speaking engagements, telling about her captivity. She finished her narrative of the Spirit Lake Massacre in 1885, and in 1891 she used the profits to purchase her family’s cabin. She restored it as a historical site and opened it to the public, charging admission — 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children. During the winter of 1893-94, Abbie lobbied the Iowa Legislature for money to construct a monument to the victims (about 40 people were killed) of the Spirit Lake Massacre. On July 26, 1895, about 5,000 people attended the dedication of a 55-foot granite obelisk that was erected near the Gardner cabin. Abbie’s scars ran deep. ‘Never have I recovered from the injuries inflicted upon me while captive among the Indians,’ she said. ‘Instead of outgrowing them, as I hoped to, they have grown upon me as the years went by, and utterly undermined my health.’ Abigail Gardner Sharp died at Colfax, Iowa, on January 26, 1921.

After 1857 Inkpaduta was reportedly seen still lurking about the Spirit Lake area. His depredations led to the withholding of Dakota annuities until the guilty parties were turned over to authorities. Scarce supplies led to unrest among the innocent bands, which contributed to the start of the Sioux Uprising (also called the Minnesota Uprising) in August 1862; more than 600 white settlers were killed at New Ulm and elsewhere in southern Minnesota, and about 300 were captured. Inkpaduta again was involved in some of the atrocities. Once more, he escaped punishment and fled. He, according to Lakota holy man Black Elk, was present at the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he reportedly led the Santees (another name for the Wahpekute and Mdewakanton Dakotas) against the 7th Cavalry. In 1877 he took refuge in Canada with Sitting Bull’s band. Inkpaduta never returned to U.S. territory; he evaded capture and died in 1881 in Manitoba. Today, some New Western historians and others view Inkpaduta in a kinder, gentler light. He has been described as ‘trustworthy,’ ‘a very humble man who tried to avoid trouble,’ ‘a figure of heroic caliber’ and ‘one of the greatest resistance fighters that the Dakota Nation ever produced.’ But Abbie Gardner expressed the views of most Americans who survived those earlier days. ‘By the whites,’ she said, ‘Inkpaduta will ever be remembered as a savage monster in human shape, fitted only for the darkest corner of Hades.’

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