events so well known that it seems needless to
do more than to refer to them. The Nez Perces in turn went down forever
when Joseph came out and surrendered, saying, "From where the sun now
stands I fight against the white man no more forever." His surrender to
fate did not lack its dignity. Indeed, a mournful interest attached
to the inevitable destiny of all these savage leaders, who, no doubt,
according to their standards, were doing what men should do and all that
men could do.

The main difficulty in administering full punishment to such bands was
that after a defeat they scattered, so that they could not be overtaken
in any detailed fashion. After the Custer fight many of the tribe went
north of the Canadian line and remained there for some time. The writer
himself has seen along the Qu'Appelle River in Saskatchewan some of the
wheels taken out of the watches of Custer's men. The savages broke them
up and used the wheels for jewelry. They even offered the Canadians for
trade boots, hats, and clothing taken from the bodies of Custer's men.

The Modoc war against the warriors of Captain Jack in 1873 was waged in
the lava beds of Oregon, and it had the distinction of being one of
the first Indian wars to be well reported in the newspapers. We heard a
great deal of the long and trying campaigns waged by the Army in revenge
for the murder of General Canby in his council tent. We got small glory
out of that war, perhaps, but at last we hanged the ringleader of the
murderers; and the extreme Northwest remained free from that time on.

Far in the dry Southwest, where home-building man did not as yet essay
a general occupation of the soil, the blood-thirsty Apache long waged
a warfare which tried the mettle of our Army as perhaps no other tribes
ever have done. The Spaniards had fought these Apaches for nearly three
hundred years, and had not beaten them. They offered three hundred
dollars each for Apache scalps, and took a certain number of them.
But they left all the remaining braves sworn to an eternal enmity. The
Apaches became mountain outlaws, whose blood-mad thirst for revenge
never died. No tribe ever fought more bitterly. Hemmed in and
surrounded, with no hope of escape, in some instances they perished
literally to the last man. General George Crook finished the work of
cleaning up the Apache outlaws only by use of the trailers of their own
people who sided with the whites for pay. Without the Pima scouts he
nev