ELDORADO 255 



tasms, and jibbering in the incipient idiocy, incident 

 to their starving thirst, holding with them horrible 

 converse and tempting them to suicide and murder. 



On the seventeenth day of their wanderings, one 

 of the men — named Harris — of heroic endurance, left 

 his dying comrades, and hastened on for relief. The 

 others now became idiots, through inanition, wept 

 and babbled, unable almost to move. Harris was 

 lucky enough to strike the camp of a party of Creek 

 Indians, out on a hunting expedition, and sent them to 

 the relief of his companions. At this time, William 

 Waldo — who was then in the Indian nation, having 

 left Santa Fe a short time before — heard of the ter- 

 rible plight of these men, and hastened to their relief, 

 arrived shortly after their rescue by the Creeks. They 

 had been taken to Fort Gibson, and from there by 

 boat to St. Louis. 



To palliate, in some measure, the savage hostility of 

 the Comanches, at this period it will be necessary to 

 explain its origin. Up to a short time before the ter- 

 rible battles, in which we have seen the Bents en- 

 gaged, the Comanches had always been friendly to 

 the American trappers and traders, and fearing no 

 trouble, a company of men crossing the plains had 

 detached two of their number, McNeice and Monroe, 

 to go ahead and select a camping place. 



They had become extremely careless, being in the 

 Comanche country and understanding that they were 

 friendly, and after choosing a camp, they had, from 

 all indications, lain down and gone to sleep. Here 

 they were killed bv Indians, who were probably not 

 able to resist the temptation of safely murdering two 

 white men. The stream upon which this cowardly 



