style of
paint and ornament, ready for the sacrifice. He was ready and willing
to be slain _among_ his own people, but to go back and suffer the
ignominy of being hung up by the neck till dead was more than he could
bear. If the Indian dies in this way, all believe they cannot enter
into the happy hunting-grounds.

They were supposed to have murdered Edward McMurty, near Grand Island,
Nebraska, in June, 1868.

After being shut up in a filthy jail about two years, they were
acquitted. This was a sample of the way we dispense justice in our
courts of law.

A TRIP TO FORT LARAMIE.

This post was established a great many years since by the American Fur
Company, to trade with the Indians, buying furs and peltries of them in
return for various articles of merchandise, such as tobacco, sugar,
coffee, blankets, calico, beads, etc. Mr. John Jacob Astor, the
millionaire of New York, made his great wealth by dealing in furs with
the Indians.

It is related of an agent of the company that while weighing the furs,
he would place his foot on the scales and call it a pound! Of course he
could keep it on as long as he chose, and the Indians would be none the
wiser. It is a good story, but in nowise related to Mr. Astor, who was
reputed to be honest, and at one time very poor.

It was full of curiosity that I started from Fort Russell with the
paymaster, Major Burbank, Inspector-General Sweitzer, Medical Director
J. B. Brown, and others, on the last of May, 1870, with an escort of a
dozen cavalry, to pay a few days' visit to Laramie, ninety-five miles
north-east of our post. Leaving at noon in procession, with three
ambulances and as many army wagons, scaling the bluffs, bare of
everything like trees or shrubs, and only covered with grass and wild
flowers, and now and then sage-bush and prickly-pear cactus, which are
very troublesome to the horses' feet. The roads were, as usual, very
hard and fine, so that up hill and down dale we made six miles to the
hour all the way. Our first station was Horse Creek, twenty-five miles,
where we camped on a fine stream of water for the night. When a party
thus camps out, the wagons are corraled, as it is called,--_i.e._ a
circle is made of them and the horses are tethered inside or _lariated_
with a rope long enough to let them feed, and this is held by an iron
stake or pin driven into the ground. Then the tents are put up in a
line, and at once begins the work of gathering brush an