United States or Austria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
While the white men, who had been busy forcing peace upon the red men, were foolishly killing each other, the red men saw themselves free to strike, and clean the buffalo country. So the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Kiowas and many of the Arapahos arose, to close the wagon trails, plunder the stage stations, drive out the settlers, and save the buffalo. The result was the great Indian war of 1864.
A war party of seven hundred Red River Comanches, Southern Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas and Apaches were formed, to wipe out Adobe Walls. Quana Parker, chief of the Kwahadi band of Comanches, became the leader. The Kwahadi Comanches had not signed the treaty of 1867, by which the other tribes sold their lands and settled upon places assigned them by the Government.
The other men were Good Thunder, Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Broken Arm, from Pine Ridge. Without permission from their agents they traveled west into Wyoming, to talk with the Arapahos and Shoshonis at the Fort Washakie reservation. Some Cheyenne delegates from the Tongue River reservation in Montana were there also, seeking information. The Arapahos and Shoshonis said that the word was true.
The Arapahos and the Southern Cheyennes traded in their buffalo robes here; the mountain Utes, and the Red River Comanches of northern Texas came in. At one time, in the late fall and in the winter, twenty thousand Indians would be camped within sight of it. Trappers from north, west and south made it their market and headquarters. Traders trailed in, from the States and from New Mexico.
All the buffalo would act this way, in the happy time to come. The day of buffalo herds on the plains was past; but the party asserted that they did find a herd, and killed one buffalo and he sprang up, from the hoofs and tail and head, just as the Messiah had promised. The Cheyennes, the Shoshonis, the Arapahos, the Kiowas, the Utes, the Pai-Utes, were dancing the Ghost Dance.
Green River is frequently as red as any river could be. After a storm in the headwaters of Vermilion Creek I have seen the Green a positively bright vermilion. The Arapahos were said to range into Brown's Park; the Utes were all along the Wonsits Valley and below it on both sides of the river.
The Cheyennes, their allies from the Sioux and the Arapahos, made no such promise regarding the Kansas Pacific. The Union Pacific "thunder wagons" had divided the buffalo into the northern and the southern herds; now the southern herd was to be divided again.
It was not to be expected that Indians would attack Adobe Walls itself; they were more likely to raid the camps: but the general store seemed to be a great prize the Comanches and Kiowas and Apaches and Arapahos and Cheyennes counted upon plunder of clothes and flour and ammunition, and I-sa-tai's medicine had told him to try Adobe Walls first. The night was warm.
Word Of The Day