When one looks back over the sixty years that have elapsed since Ma-za-ku-ta-ma-ni delivered his bitter invective against white infidelity at the Upper Agency on the Yellow Medicine, one can only wonder at the transformation which has been wrought in what was popularly known east of the Alleghenies as the Great American Desert. In sixty years the frontier has moved steadily westward until to-day it is gone not alone from the Mississippi Valley but from the American continent. What was a vast expanse of prairie in 1857 has become a country of prosperous homes.
Where then not a town was to be found to-day may be seen numerous large cities throbbing with industrial life, while towns and villages dot the landscape everywhere. Loneliness and desolation have given way to that condition where man's habitation is found at every turn. In sixty years this area has changed from the frontier of civilization to the very center of its arts and industries. In a country where Indians were met with by the thousands in 1857, one may now travel for days across the plains without catching a glimpse of a red man. The Indian has all but gone from a land where he once roamed free and uncontrolled.
Similarly time has dealt with the people of a different race who played major or minor parts in the tragedy at Spirit Lake and Springfield in 1857. Indeed, time has not always dealt kindly with them, and in more than one instance they have suffered much from its ravages. No one who survived the terrible experience of March, 1857, on the borders of the northwestern lakes was able to regain title to the claims of murdered relatives. The Gardner, Thatcher, and Marble claims were all preëmpted by the settlers of 1858 without regard to their former holders. Those preëmpting were perhaps acting within their legal rights; but the first comers, under the customs of the frontier, were entitled to the claims which they had staked out.
So widely have the survivors of the events of 1857 scattered that to-day but one individual, Mrs. Abbie Gardner Sharp, remains at or near the scene of the massacre. While living with her sister Eliza at Hampton, Iowa, Miss Abbie Gardner became acquainted with Casville Sharp, a young relative of the Noble and Thatcher families. On August 16, 1857, they were married. About a year after the marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Sharp visited the scene of the tragedy at Okoboji in the hope of securing some settlement for the Gardner claim. Although a small amount was paid Mrs. Sharp by J. S. Prescott who had preëmpted the claim, the sum was only nominal and in no sense an adequate compensation for the property lost.