doned his wicked career, he was regarded
by every army officer with whom he had a personal acquaintance as a
remarkably good Indian; for he really made the most strenuous efforts to
initiate his tribe into the idea that it was best for it to follow the
white man's road. He argued with them that the time was very near when
there would no longer be any region where the Indians could live as
they had been doing, depending on the buffalo and other game for the
sustenance of their families; they must adapt themselves to the methods
of their conquerors.

In July, 1869, he became greatly offended with the government for
its enforced removal of his tribe from its natural and hereditary
hunting-grounds into the reservation allotted to it. At that time
many of his warriors, together with the Comanches, made a raid on the
defenceless settlements of the northern border of Texas, in which the
savages were disastrously defeated, losing a large number of their most
beloved warriors. On the return of the unsuccessful expedition, a great
council was held, consisting of all the chiefs and head men of the two
tribes which had suffered so terribly in the awful fight, to consider
the best means of avenging the loss of so many braves and friends.
Kicking Bird was summoned before that council and condemned as a coward;
they called him a squaw, because he had refused to go with the warriors
of the combined tribes on the raid into Texas.

He told a friend of mine some time afterward that he had intended never
again to go against the whites; but the emergency of the case, and his
severe condemnation by the council, demanded that he should do something
to re-establish himself in the good graces of his tribe. He then made
one of the most destructive raids into Texas that ever occurred in the
history of its border warfare, which successfully restored him to the
respect of his warriors.

In that raid Kicking Bird carried off vast herds of horses and a large
number of scalps. Although his tribe fairly worshipped him, he was not
at all satisfied with himself. He could look into the future as well
as any one, and from that time on to his tragic death he laboured most
zealously and earnestly in connection with the Indian agents to
bring his people to live on the reservation which the government had
established for them in the Territory.

At the inauguration of the so-called "Quaker Policy" by President Grant,
that sect was largely intrusted with the