The Daily Dispatch: February 18, 1861., [Electronic resource]

Great distress of the settlers in Southwestern Kansas.

‘ Snow has fallen to the depth of 18 inches on a level. The cold is intense, and stock of all descriptions is dying off with fearful rapidity. Most of the inhabitants are reduced to Buffalo meat alone, and not a team is able to make the journey through the show. The messenger walked twenty-six miles before finding a track after leaving the settlement, and seventy miles before reaching Emporia, where he took a stage and came on here. The mails on the route had not been carried through for three weeks. Owing to the great depth of the snow and the intense cold, horses and cattle are dying along the route. Goods were abandoned in the middle of the prairies. The teams had died or given out, or the limbs of the drivers had become frozen, and they had to seek refuge at the nearest settlement to save their lives. One man will lose both of his legs, another both of his hands.

’ The Osage Indians had attacked a party of the settlers, who were hunting wolves for their skins. The Indians killed two of the settlers. One they burned and ..; the other they scalped.