Gimpfire Stories of Indian Qiaracter 525 



die. They were starving, too, for the promised rations 

 were never delivered. Nearly half were sick of fevers and 

 malaria, for medicine was refused them. The two hun- 

 dred and thirty-fi.ve warriors were reduced to sixty-nine. 

 The extermination of the tribe was being effected. They 

 begged for succor; they asked only to go home to their 

 own land, but, as usual, no notice was taken of their 

 prayers. 



They could not live where they were. The American 

 Government was obviously bent on killing them off, so they 

 decided that it would be better to die at home — taking the 

 chance of bullets rather than the certainty of fever. 



On the ninth of September, 1878, therefore. Dull Knife, 

 their head chief, gathered in his ponies, packed up his camp, 

 burned the last bridge, and, with warriors, women, and 

 children, set out for home, in defiance of the soldiers of a 

 corrupt government. 



At dawn his departure was discovered, troops were 

 ordered out, telegraph wires were busied, and then began a 

 flight and a pursuit the story of which should thrill the 

 world for the heroism of the fugitives, and shock humanity 

 for the diabolical brutality of the American authorities. 



Two thousand troops were sent against this handful of 

 some sixty-nine warriors, sick and weak with starvation, 

 and encumbered with about two hundred and fifty, more 

 or less, sick women and children. 



I do not believe there was an American soldier who was 

 not ashamed of his job. But he had no right to an opinion. 

 He was under orders to run down and capture or kill this 

 band of starving Indians, whose abominable crime was that 

 they loved their homes. 



We have had fragmentary accounts of that awful flight. 

 Night and day the warriors rode and fought. Some days 

 they covered seventy miles and when their horses gave out, 



