Dade and his command was being fought, the death of Thompson and others was effected within a few hundred yards of Fort King, on February 28th.  All of the troops except Thomas W. Lendrum’s company of the Third Artillery, about forty strong, had been withdrawn on the 26th, to re-enforce General Clinch at Lang Syne plantation, with a view to his striking a blow at the families of the Indians supposed to be concealed in the swamps and hammocks of the Ouithlacoochee River, with the hope of drawing the Indian warriors out and bringing on a general engagement.  All those attached to the fort or agency were directed not to pass beyond the picketing.  Thompson slept inside the defenses and passed the greater part of the day at the agency, about one hundred yards beyond the works.  The sutler, Rogers, had moved his goods into the fort, but was in the habit of taking his meals at his residence, six hundred yards away in the skirt of a hammock to the southwest of the fort.

On the day of the massacre Lieutenant Constantine Smith, of the Second Artillery, had dined with General Thompson, and after dinner the two went out for a walk.  They had proceeded about three hundred yards beyond the agency office when they were fired upon by a party of Indians who were concealed in the hammock on the border of which the sutler’s house stood.  The reports of the rifles, and the war-whoop repeated, were heard within a brief time, other volleys more remote were fired, when the smoke of the firing was seen at the fort.  Captain Lendrum at once called out his men, who were at that time engaged in strengthening the pickets.  He was not aware of the absence from the fort of General Thompson and Lieutenant Smith; he supposed the firing was a ruse to draw him out and cut him off from the fort.  Very soon several whites and negroes came in and informed him that Mr. Rogers, his clerks, and themselves had been surprised at dinner, and the three former had fallen into the hands of the Indians.  A small command was at once dispatched to succor and pursue, but the butchery had been as brief as it was complete, and a last war-whoop had been given as a signal for retreat.  The bodies of General Thompson, Lieutenant Smith, and Mr. Kitzler were soon found and brought in; those of the others were not found until the following morning.  General Thompson’s body had fourteen bullets in it and a deep knife-wound in the left breast.  Lieutenant Smith and Mr. Kitzler had each received two bullets in the head.  The bodies of Rogers the sutler and Robert Suggs were shockingly mangled, the skulls of each being broken, and all save Suggs were scalped.  The party was led by Assiola, and consisted of fifty or sixty Micosukees.  Two other Indians were in the party attired as chiefs, but were not recognized.  This information comes from an old negro woman who was in the house and who concealed herself so as to elude the Indians, and made her escape to the fort after the massacre.