Beadle's Dime Novels No. 75: The Hunter's Escape

Catalog Note "The Hunter's Escape: A Tale of the North West in 1862" by Edward S. Ellis is a frontier adventure narrative set in Minnesota during the Civil War era. The story centers on Father Richter, a seventy-year-old missionary who has labored forty years among the Sioux Indians, and his daughter Cora, born at the mission. On a Sabbath morning in autumn 1862, Father Richter conducts services for approximately fifty Indian congregants when he notices unusual signs of disturbance among his typically peaceful flock. His suspicions are confirmed when Christian Jim, a converted Sioux and protagonist of Ellis's earlier work "Indian Jim," arrives bearing news of a major Indian uprising occurring at the Upper Agency and other missions. Jim counsels local Sioux against joining the rebellion, warning of federal punishment. The narrative explores themes of missionary devotion, religious conversion, and frontier conflict amid the broader context of the Dakota War of 1862.