The noise alerted the Piegan camp and Chief Heavy Runner. Heavy Runner ran toward the soldiers, "shouting and waving a piece of paper - a safe conduct from the Indian Bureau." He was immediately shot and killed. Scout Joseph Cobell later took credit for shooting Heavy Runner. Cobell was married to the sister of Mountain Chief, and wanted to divert attention from his brother-in-law's camp, which he knew was about downstream. After Cobell's first shot, the rest of Baker's command opened fire. From the ridges above the camp, the soldiers shot into lodges filled with sleeping people. After a while, they charged into the camp. William Birth of Company K boasted that they sliced open lodge coverings with butcher knives and shot the unarmed people inside. He said: "We killed some with axes" and "gave them an awful massacreing. [sic]"  Spear Woman was six years old at the time of the massacre. She remembered waking up to the noise of barking dogs. She watched Heavy Runner run toward the troops, holding his "name paper" up above his head. Then the soldiers began shooting. She ran into a nearby lodge and hid behind a bed backrest. While she waited, soldiers moved from lodge to lodge, killing her people. One soldier cut a hole in the lodge where she hid and shot everyone who moved. Buffalo Trail Woman saw soldiers surround a lodge and shoot into it in unison. They then took blankets, robes, and anything else they wanted. Finally, they tore down all the tipis and set everything on fire. She saw them burn wounded people in the conflagration. Long Time Calf escaped through the freezing waters of the Marias River, carrying her infant niece. She was eight years old. Bear Head had gone out of the camp to catch his horses when he encountered soldiers. They took him prisoner. He saw Heavy Runner run toward the soldiers, waving a paper, and then fall as the troops opened fire. He saw soldiers shoot at the tops of lodges, cutting the bindings and collapsing them onto the fire so that they smothered and burned their occupants. He watched them do this to the lodge of his mother, Fair Singing Woman, killing her along with his father's three other wives and their four daughters. He saw them tear down all the remaining lodges, shoot the occupants, and burn everything, bodies and lodges together. Powerless to save his family, Bear Head wished the soldiers had killed him, too. After the soldiers left, a few people camp back to the camp from their hiding places in the brush.