the treaty was ratified. Their lands were constantly raided by the Sioux. Several desperate battles were fought, and, finally, the weaker tribe was compelled to seek safety beyond the Big Horn river.
Had the Sioux and Crows been left to settle the difficulty between themselves, few of the latter tribe would be left on the face of the earth to-day. The white man's government might make what treaties it pleased with the Indians, but it was quite a different matter to get the white man himself to respect the official parchment. Three-fourths of the Black Hills region, and all of the Big Horn, were barred by the Great Father and Sitting Bull against the enterprise of the daring, restless and acquisitive Caucasian race. The military expe-
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ditions, under Generals Sully, Connors, Stanley and Custer —all of which were partially unsuccessful—had attracted the attention of the country to the great region already specified. The beauty and variety of the landscape, the immense quantities of the noblest species of American game; the serrated mountains, and forest-covered hills; the fine grazing lands and rushing streams, born of the snows of the majestic Big Horn peaks; and, above all else, the rumor of great gold deposits, the dream of wealth which hurled Cortez on Mexico and Pizarro on Peru, fired the Caucasian heart with the spirit of adventure and exploration, to which the attendant and well-recognized danger lent an additional zest. The expedition of General Custer, which entered the Black Hills proper—those of Dakota—in 1874, confirmed the reports of "gold finds," and, thereafter, a wall of fire, not to mention a wall of Indians, could not stop the encroachments of that terrible white race before which all other races of mankind, from Thibet to Hindostan, and from Algiers to Zululand, have gone down. At the news of gold, the grizzled '49or shook the dust of California from his feet, and started overland, accompanied by daring comrades, for the far-distant "Hills;" the Australian miner left his pick half buried in the antipodean sands, and started, by ship and saddle, for the same goal; the diamond hunter of Brazil and of "the Cape;" the veteran "prospectors" of Colorado and Western Montana; the "tar heels" of the Carolinian hills; the "reduced gentlemen" of Europe; the worried and worn city clerks of London, Liverpool, New York or Chicago; the stout English yeoman, tired of high
OR THE CONQUEST OF THE SIOUX
rents and poor returns; the sturdy Scotchman, tempted from stubborn plodding after wealth to seek fortune under more rapid conditions; the light-hearted Irishman, who drinks in the spirit of adventure with his mother's milk; the daring mine delvers of Wales and of Cornwall; the precarious gambler of Monte Carlo—in short, every man who lacked fortune, and who would rather be scalped than remain poor, saw in the vision of the Black Hills, El Dorado; and to those picturesquely sombre eminences the adventurers of the earth—some honest and some the opposite—came trooping in masses, "like clouds at eventide."
In vain did the Government issue its proclamations; in vain were our veteran regiments of cavalry and infantry, commanded by warriors true and tried, drawn up across the path of the daring invaders; in vain were arrests made, baggage seized, horses confiscated and wagons burned; no earthly power could hinder that bewildering swarm of human ants. They laughed at the proclamations, evaded the soldiers, broke jail, did without wagons or outfit of any kind, and, undaunted by the fierce war whoops of the exasperated Sioux, rushed on to the fight for gold with burning hearts and naked hands! Our soldiers, whom no foe, white, red or black, could make recreant to their flag upon the field of honor, overcome by the moral epidemic, deserted by the squad to join the grand army of indomitable adventurers. And soon, from Buffalo Gap to Inyan Kara, and from Bear Butte to Great Canon, the sound of the pick and spade made all the land resonant with the music of Midas. Thickly as the mushrooms grow in the summer nights on
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the herbage robbed sheep range, rose "cities" innumerable, along the Spearfish and the Deadwood and Rapid creeks. Placer and quartz mines developed with marvelous rapidity, and, following the first, and boldest, adventurers, the eager, but timid and ease-loving, capitalists, who saw Indians in every sage brush, came in swarms. Rough board shanties, and hospital tents, were the chief " architectural " features of the new "cities," which swarmed with gamblers, harlots and thieves, as well as with honest miners. By the fall of 1875, the northern segment of the irregular, warty geological formation, known as the Black Hills, was prospected, "staked" and, in fairly good proportion, "settled," after the rough, frontier fashion. Pierre and Bismarck, on the Missouri river, and Sidney and Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific railroad, became the supply depots of the new mining regions, and, at that period, enjoyed a prosperity which they have not equaled since. All the passes leading into "the Hills," from the points mentioned, swarmed with hostile Indians, most of whom were well fed at the agencies and all of whom boasted of being better armed, and better supplied with fixed ammunition, than the soldiers of our regular army. The rocks of Buffalo Gap and Red Canyon, particularly, rang with the rifle shots of the savages, and the return fire of the hardy immigrants, many of whom paid with their lives the penalty of their ambition. The stages that ran to " the Hills" from the towns on the Missouri and the Union Pacific rarely ever escaped attack—sometimes by robbers, but oftenest by Indians. All passengers, even the women, who were, at that time, chiefly composed of the
OR THE CONQUEST OF THE SIOUX
rough, if not absolutely immoral, class, traveled with arms in their hands ready for immediate action. Border ruffians infested all the cities, and, very soon, became almost as great a menace to life and property as the savages themselves. Murders and suicides occurred in abundance, as the gambling dens increased and the low class saloons multiplied. Notwithstanding these discouragements, the period of 1874, '75 and '76 was the Augustan era, if the term be not too transcendental, of the Black Hills. The placer mines were soon exhausted, and, as it required capital to work the quartz ledges, the poor miners, or the impatient ones, who hoped to get rich in a day, quickly "stampeded " for more promising regions, and left the mushroom "cities" to the capitalists, the wage workers, the gamblers, the women in scarlet, and to these, in later days, may be added the rancheros, or cattle men. Morality has greatly improved in " the Hills" since 1876, and business has settled down to a steady, oldfashioned gait, but the first settlers still remember, with vague regret, the stirring times of old, when gold dust passed as currency; when whisky was bad and fighting general; when claims were held dear and life cheap; when the bronzed hunter, or long-haired "scout," strutted around in half savage pride, and when the renowned " Wild Bill," who subsequently met a fate so sudden and so awful, was at once the glory and the terror of that active, but primitive, community. But enough of historical retrospection. I will now resume my narrative of the long and weary march, which began at Fort Russell in "the ides of May," and terminated at Fort Laramie in the last days of September, 1876.
CHAPTER III.
THE MARCH OF THE PLATTE.
The final order to move out on the expedition readied Fort Russell, as I think I have already stated, on May 16th. On the morning of the 17th, several troops of the 3d Cavalry, and, I think, one or two of the 2d Cavalry, under the orders of Col. 'W'. B. Royall, marched northward toward the Platte. It was my desire to accompany this column, but Captain Sutorius, Company E, of the 3d Cavalry, had to wait, under orders, until the morning of the 19th. Captain Wells, Troop E, of the 2d Cavalry, had orders to march with Sutorius. As I messed with the latter, I was compelled to wait also, and I occupied myself during the brief interval in visiting Cheyenne, and taking final leave of my kind friends in that city. I met there Mr. T. C. McMillan, now a State senator, who was going out as correspondent for another Chicago newspaper. Mr. McMillan was in feeble health at the time, but he was determined not to be left behind. He was fortunate in making messing arrangements with Captain Sutorius, who was the soul of hospitality. As McMillan had to purchase a horse and some outfit, we determined to follow, rather than accompany, the two troops mentioned, who marched for Lodge Pole creek, eighteen miles distant from Fort Russell, at daybreak. When McMillan had made his purchases, we set out on horseback, accom
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