1 8 Ranching in the Bad Lands. 



from Indians. That summer the buffalo hunters had killed 

 a couple of Crows, and while we were on the prairie a 

 long-range skirmish occurred near us between some 

 Cheyennes and a number of cowboys. In fact, we our- 

 selves were one day scared by what we thought to be a 

 party of Sioux ; but on riding toward them they proved 

 to be half-breed Crees, who were more afraid of us than 

 we were of them. 



During the past century a good deal of sentimental 

 nonsense has been talked about our taking the Indians' 

 land. Now, I do not mean to say for a moment that 

 gross wrong has not been done the Indians, both by 

 government and individuals, again and again. The govern- 

 ment makes promises impossible to perform, and then fails 

 to do even what it might toward their fulfilment ; and 

 where brutal and reckless frontiersmen are brought into 

 contact with a set of treacherous, revengeful, and fiendishly 

 cruel savages a long series of outrages by both sides is 

 sure to follow. But as regards taking the land, at least 

 from the western Indians, the simple truth is that the latter 

 never had any real ownership in it at all. Where the 

 game was plenty, there they hunted ; they followed it 

 when it moved away to new hunting-grounds, unless they 

 were prevented by stronger rivals ; and to most of the land 

 on which we found them they had no stronger claim than 

 that of having a few years previously butchered the origi- 

 nal occupants. When my cattle came to the Little Mis- 

 souri the region was only inhabited by a score or so of 

 white hunters ; their title to it was quite as good as that of 

 most Indian tribes to the lands they claim; yet nobody 



