This book is an account of Minnie Buce Carrigan's captivity among the Sioux after the 1862 uprising and her subsequent experience as an orphan. Carrigan emigrated with her German parents to Fox Lake, Wisconsin in 1858. Two years later they helped to establish a German settlement at Middle Creek in Renville County, Minnesota, where they lived in relative comfort and peace among the Sioux [Dakota]. By 1862, the numbers of settlers had grown exponentially, and their Sioux neighbors began to display signs of hostility. On August 18, 1862, when Carrigan was only about seven years of age, her parents and two of her siblings were killed during the Sioux uprising. Carrigan was taken captive with a brother and sister and spent ten weeks among the Sioux before the U.S. army compelled the return of all captives. Several other survivors, Emanuel Reyff, J.G. Lane, Mrs. Inefeldt, and Minnie Krieger, relate their own experiences in a final section of the book.