eservation in accordance with the treaty made with the Great Father at
Washington, D. C., and regular troops were sent against them.

General Custer, with the 7th Regiment, led the advance, and General
Terry aimed for the rear of the children of the forest up the Big Horn.
Here, on the 25th of June, without assistance, and with characteristic
courage, General Custer attacked the enemy, sending Colonel Reno to fall
on the rear of the village.

Scarcely enough of Custer's own command with him at the time lived long
enough to tell the story of the battle. General Custer, his two
brothers, and his nephew were among the dead. Reno held his ground until
reinforced, but Custer's troops were exterminated.

It is said that the Sioux rose from the ground like bunch-grass and
swarmed up the little hill like a pest of grasshoppers, mowing down the
soldiers with the very newest and best weapons of warfare, and leaving
nothing at last but the robbed and mutilated bodies lying naked in the
desolate land of the Dakotah.

The Fenimore Cooper Indian is no doubt a brave and highly intellectual
person, educated abroad, refined and cultivated by foreign travel,
graceful in the grub dance or scalp walk-around, yet tender-hearted as a
girl, walking by night fifty-seven miles in a single evening to warn his
white friends of danger. The Indian introduced into literature was a
bronze Apollo who bathed almost constantly and only killed white people
who were unpleasant and coarse. He dressed in new and fresh buckskins,
with trimming of same, and his sable hair hung glossy and beautiful down
the coppery billows of muscles on his back.

The real Indian has the dead and unkempt hair of a busted buggy-cushion
filled with hen feathers. He lies, he steals, he assassinates, he
mutilates, he tortures. He needs Persian powder long before he needs the
theology which abler men cannot agree upon. We can, in fact, only retain
him as we do the buffalo, so long as he complies with the statutes. But
the red brother is on his way to join the cave-bear, the three-toed
horse, and the ichthyosaurus in the great fossil realm of the historic
past. Move on, maroon brother, move on!

[Illustration: ON HIS WAY TO JOIN THE CAVE-BEAR, THE THREE-TOED HORSE,
AND THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.]

Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler were nominated in the summer
of 1876, and so close was the fight against Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas
A. Hendricks that friends of the latter to th