She cut a lock of his hair and kept it.

AH: We had two people who were killed on our farm site. Riel was married to a Hartman. Hartman was killed as they were coming down… it was just like coming down 29 that’s what we call it now but it was really a trail. I don’t know if it went as far as South Dakota.

AH: They (the Dakota) came through there. Riel wasn’t in the house. I don’t know where she was but anyhow they found these two men. They were in the field. Some remember it was a potato field, others say it was a cornfield. A cornfield makes so much more sense in August because they were killed. She went out to them. The news had passed to New Ulm and farther. She went out to the field and he said I’m going to die. She cut a lock of his hair and kept it. The hired man named Roner said you have to get out of here, get away. So she went down into the ravine. Charles said Grandpa said she went with her dog and she had to choke her dog for fear that he would bark and the Indians would look for her. She survived and then they went on to the other Henle farm, the Anton Henle farm. The mother there hid in the ravine. There is a rock with a plaque on that’s down there in the ditch a little ways that tells the story that this is the place that the boys from New Ulm came to join the Civil War. The Post Office was in Milford. So they came out and the Indians attacked them and some were killed. That whole story is in this little book here. There’s a lot of information, the names of the people that were killed.

DL: Let’s back up and talk about the people you’re describing here, the two men who were out in the field that day.

AH: Florien Hartman. He was the husband to Marie Henle. They lived in the field a little bit west of the house that we had. A couple of years ago, my son-in-law and my husband and the kids were out plowing in the fall. They hit something and on the way back, Charles stopped and found a stone that was almost like a square. Underneath there, Charles thought what in the world is a bottle cap… here it was a quarter. The quarter was kind of split and Grandpa said it was a tradition to bury a coin the year that a house was built. Grandpa said, "Oh for heaven sakes, you’re plowing up money." [Laughter] He was the one that was killed.