at first." Lives saved In his narrative, Big Eagle stated that he was reluctant to claim credit for saving the lives of settlers during the massacres, because after the war, many Dakota warriors made claims that weren't true: "So many Indians have lied about their saving the lives of white people that I dislike to speak of what I did." One settler he mentioned by name in his narrative, however, was George H. Spencer, a clerk in the trading store of William Henry Forbes. Spencer's life was spared during the August 18 massacre and he became one of four male prisoners taken captive during the war. After the war, Spencer credited Wakinyatawa (His Own Thunder) for intervening to save his life, but had no recollection of the role that Big Eagle had played:"But I did save the life of George H. Spencer at the time of the massacre. I know that his friend, Chaska, has always had the credit of that, but Spencer would have been a dead man in spite of Chaska if it had not been for me. I asked Spencer about this once, but he said he was wounded at the time and so excited that he could not remember what I did. Once after that I kept a half-breed family from being murdered; these are all the people whose lives I claim to have saved. I was never present when the white people were willfully murdered. I saw all the dead bodies at the agency."In 1906, Big Eagle's obituary in the Minneapolis Journal claimed that he had saved the life of the Alvin family during the siege of New Ulm: "An incident that happened during the siege of New Ulm in 1862 shows that he was friendly to the whites. Near New Ulm lived a family by the name of Alvin. Alvin and a young son were in the field stacking grain when Big Eagle came to warn them that if they did not go to New Ulm at once they would be killed. They hastily drove their ox team to the house, loaded on the family and a few articles of clothing and started for New Ulm. The hostile Indians attempted to overtake them and chased them all the way to town." New Ulm and Fort Ridgely Regarding the second battle at New Ulm, Big Eagle only had a small group of men from his