cost the government
$50,000,000 a year, and stop for a long time the running of the Pacific
Railroad. They fight only at an advantage,--when they outnumber the
whites. They fight, scatter away, and reunite again; hide away in
canons (_canyons_), gorges, and mountain fastnesses, where no soldier
can find them. It would be a war of fifty years' duration.

General Sherman is reported to have said at a meeting of the Indian
Peace Commissioners, at Fort Laramie, with several tribes, "Say to the
head chief that President Grant loves the red men and will do all he
can for them. But they must behave themselves, and if they don't, tell
him _I'll kill them_!" The old chief began to mutter away something to
himself and others.

"What does he say?" said the general.

"Why," said the interpreter, "he says, '_catch 'em first, then kill
them_!'"

Have they never been wronged by white men? Have you never heard of the
Sand Creek massacre?

There had been some trouble between the Cheyennes and Arapahoes and
some soldiers near Fort Lyon, in 1864, south of Denver, Colorado, where
these Indians have a reservation. The origin of the trouble is
uncertain. Major Anthony was sent out to fight them; but on his arrival
he found them peaceable,--they had given up their prisoners and horses.

[Indians take their squaws and papooses with them when they go on
hunting expeditions. The squaws prepare all the meat, dry all the game
for winter food, and tan the buffalo- and deer-hides to sell. They live
in tents or lodges, called "Tepees," made of tanned buffalo-skins, and
usually hold about five persons, in which they cook and sleep. _On the
war-path_, they leave their squaws and papooses in their villages. This
was the case when Colonel Chivington (formerly a preacher) charged that
they were hostile, as an apology for his wholesale slaughter.]

Five hundred Indians of all ages flocked, soon as attacked, to the head
chief's camp,--"Black Kettle,"--and he raised the American flag, _with
a white truce beneath_. This, you know, is respected in all civilized
warfare. Then the slaughter began.

One who saw it said, "The troops (mainly volunteers) committed all
manner of depredations on their victims,--_scalped them_, knocked out
their brains. The white men used their knives, cutting squaws to
pieces, clubbed little children, knocking out their brains and
mutilating their bodies in every sense of the word." Thus imitating
savage warfare by nominally