d of about two
hundred Cheyennes and a few Arapahoes, with twenty Sioux who had been
visiting their friends, the Cheyennes. As near as could be
ascertained, they organized and left their camps along Pawnee Creek
about the 3d of August. Traveling northeast, they skirted around
Fort Harker, and made their first appearance among the settlers in
the Saline Valley, about thirty miles north of that post. Professing
friendship and asking food at the farm-houses, they saw the
unsuspecting occupants comply by giving all they could spare from
their scanty stores. Knowing the Indian's inordinate fondness for
coffee, particularly when well sweetened, they even served him this
luxury freely. With this the demons began their devilish work.
Pretending to be indignant because it was served them in tin cups,
they threw the hot contents into the women's faces, and then, first
making prisoners of the men, they, one after another, ravished the
women till the victims became insensible. For some inexplicable
reason the two farmers were neither killed nor carried off, so after
the red fiends had gone, the unfortunate women were brought in to
Fort Harker, their arrival being the first intimation to the military
that hostilities had actually begun.

Leaving the Saline, this war-party crossed over to the valley of the
Solomon, a more thickly settled region, and where the people were in
better circumstances, their farms having been started two or three
years before. Unaware of the hostile character of the raiders, the
people here received them in the friendliest way, providing food, and
even giving them ammunition, little dreaming of what was impending.
These kindnesses were requited with murder and pillage, and worse,
for all the women who fell into their hands were subjected to horrors
indescribable by words. Here also the first murders were committed,
thirteen men and two women being killed. Then, after burning five
houses and stealing all the horses they could find, they turned back
toward the Saline, carrying away as prisoners two little girls named
Bell, who have never been heard of since.

It was probably the intention to finish, as they marched back to the
south, the devilish work begun on the Saline, but before they reached
that valley on the return, the victims left there originally had fled
to Fort Harker, as already explained, and Captain Benteen was now
nearing the little settlement with a troop of cavalry, which he had
h