MINNEAPOLIS — A mother’s desperate two-day trek through the Minnesota wilderness, barefoot and bleeding from four gunshot wounds, ended Friday in the arms of her 11-year-old son who had carried his infant brother 50 miles to safety, survivors confirmed. The harrowing reunion came as authorities continue to tally the dead from Thursday’s massacre at Lake Shetek, an attack that has left at least a dozen settlers dead and plunged the frontier community into chaos.

Lavina Eastlick, 28, stumbled into the settlement of New Ulm on Friday morning, her body riddled with bullets and her clothing torn from the dead. She had not seen her eldest son, Merton, or her baby boy, Johnny, since the moment the Dakota war party descended on their wagon train. When she finally collapsed into a makeshift medical station, the boy she had feared dead walked in carrying his 15-month-old brother, silent and exhausted.

“He didn’t say a word. He just stood there, holding Johnny,” a witness told reporters. “She took the baby and hugged them both.

We all wept.”

The massacre began quietly enough. On the morning of August 20, 1862, Mrs. Herd was milking cattle outside her cabin when Dakota warriors approached.

Such visits were common; the Dakota often came to the settlement seeking food or tobacco. Mrs. Herd invited them inside, where they found Mr.

Voit, a farmhand. The warriors asked for tobacco, and Voit obliged, hoping to maintain peaceful relations.

As Voit picked up Mrs. Herd’s crying baby to soothe him and stepped into the yard, a warrior drew a pistol and shot him point-blank in the chest. Voit crumpled to the ground, the baby falling beside him, miraculously unharmed.

Mrs. Herd stood frozen in terror as the warriors ransacked her home, stealing valuables and destroying what they could not carry. One warrior ordered her to take the baby and her children and flee south — but warned that if she alerted neighbors, she would be killed.

The Dakota war party’s goal was clear: eliminate every white man in the territory.

Two days earlier, Lavina Eastlick had been making butter deliveries to neighbors when she encountered a Dakota man named Pawn near the Wright cabin. He greeted her warmly, admired her horse, and claimed his group was on a buffalo hunt. Something felt wrong, she later recalled.

He seemed far more interested in her horse than in conversation. She dismissed the feeling as paranoia.

On Wednesday morning, August 20, Lavina was preparing breakfast for her five sons — Merton, 11; Frank; Freddy; Giles; and baby Johnny — when their neighbor Charlie Hatch burst through the door, breathless and panicked. “The Indians are upon us!” he shouted.

Hatch had discovered Voit’s body near the Herd cabin and ridden hard to warn the settlement. John Eastlick grabbed two rifles and baby Johnny, ordering Lavina to gather the other boys and ammunition. When she tried to grab clothes, he knocked them from her hands.

There was no time. She fled barefoot, clutching her husband’s coat to keep pace.

The family joined other settlers gathering at the Wright cabin, where Pawn and his group were still camped. Pawn pledged to fight alongside the settlers, but Lavina did not trust him. She remembered how he had looked at her horse.

Her husband tried to calm her fears. “We have no better option,” he said.

The war party arrived on horseback at the edge of the field. For hours, they circled the cabin, firing into the air and killing cattle. Pawn urged the settlers to fire all their guns at once to scare the attackers away.

The white men did. The Indian defenders did not. Pawn then volunteered to parley with the war party, returning with an ultimatum: leave peacefully, or the cabin would be burned with them inside.

The settlers had no choice. Thirty-four men, women, and children took to the road, heading toward Fort Ridgely. They had traveled less than a mile when they heard the thunder of hooves and the Dakota war cry.

“All was terror and consternation among us,” Lavina later wrote. “Our merciless foes were in sight, riding at their utmost speed and would soon be upon us.”

The settlers abandoned their wagon, hoping the Dakota would stop to plunder it. They fled into a swamp with tall grass, seeking concealment. But the grass offered no protection from bullets.

For two hours, the Dakota took turns firing down from a nearby hilltop, each warrior retreating to reload after his shot.

Lavina was shot in the heel, then in the side, then in the head — a bullet lodging between her skull and scalp. She bled profusely but remained conscious. Her sons huddled around her, terrified.

“Balls fell around us like hail,” she wrote. “We felt that we were but weakly protected, but we could expect no mercy from our inhuman enemy.”

John Eastlick’s position was discovered. When he raised his rifle to fire, a shot rang out. Lavina heard the sound — different from the others.

She called to her husband. There was only a faint groan. A survivor told her he was dead.

From the hilltop, a familiar voice called out. Pawn. He had betrayed them.

Pawn promised the women and children would be spared if they surrendered. Tommy Ireland stood to beg for their lives and was shot through the chest and arm. He fell instantly.

Slowly, the survivors began to rise.

Lavina stopped at her husband’s body. He lay face down, his loyal dog still at his side. She moved on.

As she was held by an Indian, she called for her 5-year-old son Freddy. When he rose from the grass, an old Indian woman beat him with a club and stabbed him repeatedly. Lavina could only watch.

Her son Frank had been shot through the mouth, bowels, and thigh. She could not reach him.

The Dakota began executing the surrendered settlers. Lavina was walked away with her captors. She saw Pawn loading his gun.

A moment later, a bullet tore through her back and right forearm — her fourth wound. She fell to the ground, struggling to crawl off the trail. An Indian approached and bashed the back of her head with his rifle butt.

She lay still, waiting for the knife across her scalp. It never came.

She stayed in the rain for three hours before moving. She was soaked, freezing, and covered in blood. She made her way back to the swamp, passing the bodies of her friends and their children.

Some had been tortured. She took clothes from the dead to keep warm. She found her son Giles, shot through the chest, dead.

She found Frank, still breathing, dying.

“I knew that he was then dying and could not live long,” she wrote. “I wish to lie down and die beside my sweet boy.”

But Merton and Johnny were still missing. She left Frank, praying God would release him from his pain.

She searched all night. By day, she hid in the grass, hearing the cries of captives in a nearby camp. Gunshots followed.

She was sure all her sons were dead.

On Friday, she made her way to a friend’s house on Buffalo Lake, 16 miles away. A mail carrier found her and brought her to safety. There, she found Tommy Ireland — miraculously alive — who told her Merton and Johnny had survived.

Merton had hidden in the swamp when the Dakota called everyone out, carrying Johnny as far as he could.

The reunion came in New Ulm. Merton had carried his brother 50 miles without food. He said nothing when he saw his mother.

He just handed her the baby.

The Lake Shetek massacre was one of the opening horrors of the Dakota War, which would claim over 350 civilian lives before it ended. The Dakota had been starving, their annuities withheld by a government distracted by civil war. A trader’s cruel taunt — “let them eat grass or their own dung” — had lit the fuse.

But for Lavina Eastlick, the politics meant nothing. She lost her husband, John. She lost her sons Frank, Freddy, and Giles.

She was shot four times and beaten. Her foot and arm will never be the same.

Her son Merton became a hero among the soldiers in New Ulm. Everyone wanted to meet the 11-year-old who carried his baby brother to safety. They gave him money.

A photograph taken shortly after the tragedy shows Lavina, Merton, and baby Johnny — survivors of a massacre that should have killed them all.