Cherokee recruits came to me with a most kindly
letter from one of the ladies who had been teaching in the academy
from which they were about to graduate. She and I had known one
another in connection with Governmental and philanthropic work on the
reservations, and she wrote to commend the two boys to my attention.
One was on the Academy foot-ball team and the other in the glee-club.
Both were fine young fellows. The foot-ball player now lies buried
with the other dead who fell in the fight at San Juan. The singer was
brought to death's door by fever, but recovered and came back to his
home.

There were other Indians of much wilder type, but their wildness was
precisely like that of the cowboys with whom they were associated.
One or two of them needed rough discipline; and they got it, too. Like
the rest of the regiment, they were splendid riders. I remember one
man, whose character left much to be desired in some respects, but
whose horsemanship was unexceptionable. He was mounted on an
exceedingly bad bronco, which would bolt out of the ranks at drill. He
broke it of this habit by the simple expedient of giving it two
tremendous twists, first to one side and then to the other, as it
bolted, with the result that, invariably, at the second bound its legs
crossed and over it went with a smash, the rider taking the somersault
with unmoved equanimity.

The life histories of some of the men who joined our regiment would
make many volumes of thrilling adventure.

We drew a great many recruits from Texas; and from nowhere did we get
a higher average, for many of them had served in that famous body of
frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. Of course, these rangers needed
no teaching. They were already trained to obey and to take
responsibility. They were splendid shots, horsemen, and trailers. They
were accustomed to living in the open, to enduring great fatigue and
hardship, and to encountering all kinds of danger.

Many of the Arizona and New Mexico men had taken part in warfare with
the Apaches, those terrible Indians of the waterless Southwestern
mountains--the most bloodthirsty and the wildest of all the red men of
America, and the most formidable in their own dreadful style of
warfare. Of course, a man who had kept his nerve and held his own,
year after year, while living where each day and night contained the
threat of hidden death from a foe whose goings and comings were
unseen, was not apt to lose courage when c