any intrusion into the Indian reservation. | to retire to the reservation to which the Notwithstanding this prohibition, private expeditions were fitted out and started for the Black Hills. Some of these were driven back by the Indians, with loss of life and property, but others succeeded in reaching the Black Hills. It was now evident that a systematic and determined effort would be made to settle the Black Hills, in spite of the opposition of treaty of 1867 confined them, and now took advantage of the intrusions of the whites into their territory to gratify their long-cherished wish for war. They broke away from their reservation, and made repeated forays into Wyoming and Montana, laid the country waste, carried off the horses and cattle, and murdered such settlers as ventured to oppose them. the army on the frontier succeeded in forcing the savages, who were led by Sitting Bull, their most famous chief, and who numbered several thousand fighting men, back to the Big Horn mountains. The Indians now took up a strong position in the mountains, and on the twenty-fifth of June, 1876, the Seventh Cavalry, under Generals Custer and Reno, were sent forward to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy. They found the savages encamped on the left bank of the Little Horn River, and occupying a large village some three miles in length. General Custer, with his little command, at once made a gallant attack upon the Indian village, hoping that General Reno would be able to come up in time to support him. Reno was unable to advance, however, Custer's little band was soon surrounded by several thousand of the bravest Sioux warriors. The conflict which ensued was one of the most heroic in the annals of the American army, and one of the most disastrous. Custer was slain, together with every man who accompanied him into the fight, but not until they had exacted a fearful price for their lives at the hands of the savages. The Indians Defeated. General Reno, in the meantime, had become engaged at the opposite end of the town, and was so hard pressed by the Indians that he was unable to go to Custer's assist He succeeded in drawing off his men. and in retiring to the bluffs of the Little Horn, where he held his position until the arrival of General Gibbon with reinforcements compelled the savages to retreat, and saved the remnant of the Seventh Cavalry from destruction. The disaster of the Little Horn was the most terrible defeat ever inflicted upon the United States army by the savages, and was directly due to the criminal folly of the administration in sending a mere handful of GENERAL GEORGE CROOK. the Big Horn Mountains. Negotiations were in progress during the summer and autumn for the removal of the Sioux to the Indian Territory, and by the beginning of the winter the greater part of the savages had surrendered. A few bands under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse continued in the field. They were not allowed to remain in security during the winter, and on the eighth of January, 1877, a decisive victory was won over the band of Crazy Horse at Wolfe Mountains, in Montana Territory, by General Miles, with a force of infantry and artillery. This victory led to | territory of British America. By the spring the surrender of other bands of Indians, and of 1877 the war had been practically brought to a close. INDIANS SURPRISED AND DEFEATED. The question of the reconstruction of the Southern States was one of the legacies which President Grant received at the hands of his predecessor. It was fondly hoped by the country at large that under the new administration "the work of reconstruction would be accomplished and the wounds of civil war healed." The utterances of President Grant upon entering upon his new duties justified these expectations, as it was not believed that he cherished extreme views, or that he harbored vindictive feelings. "Nor is it probable," says a distinguished Northern writer, "that those who relied upon the President's disposition to deal fairly and even liberally with the Southern States, were at all mistaken in that regard; but his ignorance in civil affairs, which in some cases was conspicuous and mortifying, seems very early to have thrown him into the hands of managing politicians, and these were mainly of the extreme type, who made up in bitterness what they lacked in breadth. The politicians from the South early in 1877 the operations against Sitting | who were most about him were generally Bull obliged that chief to take refuge in the *Charles Francis Adams, Jr. "The patronage of the administration was | the Southern people. The colored people | plish only the purposes for which offices are were naturally its friends. created. Moreover, the Southern people needed peace and quiet to recuperate their exhausted interests; and while many hot-heads were sup CANYON OF THE LODORE AND GREENE RIVERS, WYOMING. large, and it would have drawn a strong support to the party had it been distributed wisely and from an evident desire to accom posed to be violent and troublesome, the best and most influential of them, of whom the late Vice-President, of the Confederacy was an example, were disposed to accept with gratitude such advances of their late enemies as promised to render peace possible and permaBut as, un nent. were not of this class, the persons who had the President's ear, and who assumed to speak for the party in Congress, found it convenient for their purpose to present the impracticable and violent as the proper representatives of Southern sentiment, and to speak of and deal with the Southern people as unrepentant rebels, who were to be held down by the strong hand. "That the white people of the South were alienated from the Republican party was not |