THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS OF THE INDIAN. 287 



marauding expedition to New Mexico were surprised by 

 troops, and some six or eight killed. When the survivors 

 reached home with the news, the most fearful excitement 

 prevailed throughout the Indian camp, and a party was 

 at once made up to go to the settlements to obtain white 

 victims in retaliation. Fortunately for the unprepared 

 settlers, but most unfortunately for themselves, a small 

 party of surveyors were at work on the route of the 

 Indian march. They were set upon by the Indians, who, 

 when they had killed a number sufficient to appease the 

 shades of their slain friends, returned satisfied to their 

 encampment without molesting the settlers. 



Two or more warriors of contiguous tribes have a 

 collision in which one is killed. His relations and friends 

 seek every opportunity to retaliate by killing one or more 

 of the relatives of the slayer. The shades appeal in turn 

 to their friends for appeasement, and in course of time 

 what may have arisen in a mere broil between two half- 

 drunken bucks has widened and deepened until almost 

 every family of each tribe has a blood feud with one or 

 more families of the other. 



No mercy is ever shown in Indian warfare ; and when 

 ambition is stimulated by superstition, and hatred and re- 

 venge by religious duty, the conflict becomes more personal, 

 more and more bitter, bloody, and barbarous, until each 

 individual of each tribe will only be satisfied with the 

 complete extermination of the other. The Sioux and 

 Pawnees are perfect exemplifications of this feeling. 



It has already been stated that the plains Indians 

 regard all pain and suffering as direct manifestation of 

 the power of the bad god. 



During the last thirty years they have been visited by 

 small pox and cholera. To describe the superstitious 

 terror, the consternation and abject fear, of these ignorant 

 savages at such times is almost beyond the power of 

 words. When the epidemic is sufficiently pronounced 



