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Down along the building railway in the valley or the Platte there had been two years of frequent encounter with small bands of Indians. Down along the Smoky Hill, in Kansas, the Cheyennes were ever giving trouble.
The weather cleared toward morning, and the sun rose without a cloud obscuring its face. The halt had been made along a small tributary of the Wichita, whose upper waters flow through the country of the Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, that of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes lying further north. The scene was inspiriting.
He might be glimpsed, now and then, as he darted about, placing his warriors. "White Antelope, that," asserted Gruard. "Eh, Bat?" "Think so," Big Bat nodded. "And he's a good one; among the best of the Cheyennes. Pass the word to get him, when we can." After that, every carbine sought for White Antelope. His time came when he led a charge.
Then I learned presently that a party of Cheyennes had made a raid on the Kaws a band of friendly Indians living near Council Grove and stolen their horses, and also robbed the houses of several white people near Council Grove. This raid was the beginning of the Indian war of 1868.
The Indians being in a very forlorn condition, Custer might have destroyed most of the tribe, and certainly all their villages, but in order to save two white women whom, it was discovered, they held as captives, he contented himself with the renewal of the Cheyennes' agreement to come in to Camp Supply.
In midsummer of 1868 forays occurred at many points along the border of the Indian Territory. General Sheridan, who now commanded the Department of the Missouri, believed that a general war was imminent. He determined to teach the southern tribesmen a lesson they would not forget. In the dead of winter our troops marched against the Cheyennes, then in their encampments below the Kansas line.
Crowding the stockade inclosure full was a motley throng border men in buckskins, engagés swart as Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the wagon camps.
As late as 1890, when the Government sent me out as physician to ten thousand Ogallalla Sioux and Northern Cheyennes at Pine Ridge Agency, I found my predecessor still practising his profession through a small hole in the wall between his office and the general assembly room of the Indians.
War party after war party of Cheyennes and Arrapahoes entered the country of their old enemies the Apaches and Utahs, but returned unable to find them.
But they manifested no such desire. Will learned that the name of the chief he had killed that morning was "Yellow Hand." He was the son of "Cut Nose," a leading spirit among the Cheyennes.
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