34 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMEETCA. 



cast their shadows around us, deeper and deeper^ as we moved 



forward- 



^Never before had hostility to the pale-face raged so fiercely 

 in the hearts of the Indians of the plains, and never had so 

 large a combination of tribes, usually at war with each other, 

 been formed to stop the advance of the road-makers. From 

 Dakota to the borders of Texas every tribe, save the TJtes, had 



■ 



put on war paint, and had mounted tlicir war steeds. Eeports 

 came from the north that the Crows- and Elaekfoots had 

 made friends with the Sioux, and from the south that the 

 Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the Kiowas and Comanches, had 

 been seen in large "bodies crossing the Arkansas, and movirig 



northward. The horrors of the last summer were fresh iu 

 the minds of the frontier men, who remembered many a com- 

 rade scalped by the red-skins. They laughed at the treaties 

 of the Fall, at General Sherman's councils, and Samhorn's 

 wagon-trains laden with gifts. They said, " "Wait till the 

 spring, till the fr-ost is out of the ground, and the grass is 

 green and abundant, and then see how the savages will keep 

 their treaties." This season had arrived, and the Indian 

 horizon looked blacker than ever. The Fort Kearny massacre, 

 in which some of the wives of the officers were brutally 

 mm-dered, and the energetic demands of the railway company 

 on the State had resulted in a considerable military force 

 being sent into IS'ebraska to protect the road to Salt Lake. 

 This had the effect of driving many additional bands or 

 Indian warriors southward, to harass the poorly-guarded route 

 along the Smoky Hill Fork. 



The warriors in many a big talk had sworn to clear their 

 hunting-grounds of the hated intruder. He should no longer 

 drive away their game, or build embanlcments and put down 

 stakes across their broad lands. So they commenced the 

 fight in their own fashion. 



