the Indian
Territory, and New Mexico. Part of this section of country--western
Kansas particularly--had been frequently disturbed and harassed
during two or three years past, the savages every now and then
massacring an isolated family, boldly attacking the surveying and
construction parties of the Kansas-Pacific railroad, sweeping down on
emigrant trains, plundering and burning stage-stations and the like
along the Smoky Hill route to Denver and the Arkansas route to New
Mexico.

However, when I relieved Hancock, the department was comparatively
quiet. Though some military operations had been conducted against
the hostile tribes in the early part of the previous summer, all
active work was now suspended in the attempt to conclude a permanent
peace with the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, in
compliance with the act of Congress creating what was known as the
Indian Peace Commission of 1867.

Under these circumstances there was little necessity for my remaining
at Leavenworth, and as I was much run down in health from the
Louisiana climate, in which I had been obliged to live continuously
for three summers (one of which brought epidemic cholera, and another
a scourge of yellow fever), I took a leave of absence for a few
months, leaving Colonel A. J. Smith, of the Seventh Cavalry,
temporarily in charge of my command.

On this account I did not actually go on duty in the department of
the Missouri till March, 1868. On getting back I learned that the
negotiations of the Peace Commissioners held at Medicine Lodge, about
seventy miles south of Fort Larned had resulted in a treaty with the
Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, by which agreement it
was supposed all troubles had been settled. The compact, as
concluded, contained numerous provisions, the most important to us
being one which practically relinquished the country between the
Arkansas and Platte rivers for white settlement; another permitted
the peaceable construction of the Pacific railroads through the same
region; and a third requiring the tribes signing the treaty to retire
to reservations allotted them in the Indian Territory. Although the
chiefs and head-men were well-nigh unanimous in ratifying these
concessions, it was discovered in the spring of 1868 that many of the
young men were bitterly opposed to what had been done, and claimed
that most of the signatures had been obtained by misrepresentation
and through proffers of certai