Oct. 8-The world's most horrible fire, a living hell that killed 3,000 and melted sand into glass pools.

It was Saturday October 7th, and the air smelled of smoke and the wildlife was restless, moving about. Railway workers were finished with their work week and built a little brushfire to burn garbage...it got out of control. The air was so hot it was almost electrifying and "dry lightning" was sparking fires. People were uneasy.
By morning the worst was feared. A little river divided Wisconsin from Michigan, with a wooden bridge over it. The train came in during the week on the rail bridge and dropped of hundreds of regular americans and foreign workers. Most just got on trains on a rumor the lumber camps were hiring, after the Civil War, men had to leave home to find work and many of the foreigners would never be identified.

In the deep woods, filled with towering old growth trees, thousands of Chippewa families were settling into their winter camps, the men hunting or fishing in Lake Michigan or the many lakes while the women and children made camp. Their number would be vastly undercounted since they were trapped in the area where the fires reached 2,ooo degrees and the children were cremated totally to ashes. We felt at least 1,200 of our relatives perished. Even if they found and open field and covered the children and huddled together, the fire sucked the oxygen out and some say the fire tornadoes pulled the little ones up into them.
The priest and parishioners dug into the sand and buried records and sacred items and he directed them to leave at once as the sky shimmered red all around them. Those with boats went out into the lake and those trapped went to the river which the Priest later wrote was crowded with wildlife and domestic animals, living and dead. It was so hot people's hair was bursting into flames, he put little kids onto the backs of cattle and herded them downriver to the lake.