DESECRATION AND MURDER. 391 



gloom, a red shirt or blanket would have answered 

 very well for bloody garments. 



These burial spots are held in high reverence by 

 the Indians, and their hatred of the white man re- 

 ceives fresh fuel whenever the latter chops down the 

 sacred trees for cord-wood. On one occasion, a con- 

 tractor destroyed a burial grove, a few miles above 

 Fort Wallace, to supply the post with fuel. The 

 first blow of the axe had scarcely fallen upon the 

 tree, when some Indians who chanced to be in the 

 neighborhood sent word that the desecrator would 

 be killed unless he desisted. Messages from the wild 

 tribes, coming in out of the waste, telling that they 

 were watching, ought to have been warning suf- 

 ficient. But he was reckless enough to disregard 

 them, and continued his work. The trees were 

 felled and cut up, and the wood delivered. The con- 

 tractor went to the post for his pay, and as he took 

 it, spoke in a jocose vein of the threat which had 

 come to naught. 



Soon afterward, he set out for camp. Midway 

 there, he heard the rush of trampling hoofs, and 

 looking up, his horrified gaze beheld a band of 

 painted savages sweeping down upon him from out 

 the west. Five minutes later, he lay upon the plain 

 a mutilated corpse, and every pocket rifled. The 

 Indians had fulfilled their threats. The trees which 

 to them answered the same purpose that the marble 

 monuments which we erect over our dead do among 

 us, had been broken up by a stranger, and sold. 

 They acted very much as white men would have 

 d^ne under similar circumstances, except that the 



