long time supplied the railroad contractors and builders with meat in this manner. Further north in Montana, although the country was alive with large game, my command was so incessantly occupied against the Indians that it was rarely any attention could be paid to game, except occasionally buffalo, deer, and mountain sheep. I regard the mountain sheep or bighorn, as the finest of all large game to hunt. To successfully hunt this animal requires greater skill, harder work, and more dangerous climbing. They frequent the little mesas and ledges at the foot of precipitous cliffs. They are very keen-sighted and difficult of approach. When in repose they are usually found on little ledges where they can survey the country below. For this reason the hunter aims to get above them, and is prepared to shoot at first sight. The skin on the knee and brisket of the mountain sheep is nearly an inch thick, made so by kneeling on the sharp rocks. In the broken country of the Rockies the black-tailed deer are nearly as surefooted as the mountain sheep, and frequently use the trails of the latter. After the Indians had been thoroughly cleared out of that country, and before it became settled by the white people, game was found in great abundance. In October, 1879, I left Fort Keogh, Montana, with a party of eight officers, twelve soldiers, and five Indians, for a hunt along the valley of the Rosebud. We were gone six days and had great success. During that time we killed sixty large deer, three antelopes, one mountain sheep, five elks, seventeen buffaloes, seventy prairie chickens and six ducks. At that season of the year the nights were cold, and the game, if properly dressed and hung up, would freeze solid during the night. In this way we were able to save most of it, and on our return to the post we had ten sixmule wagon teams heavily loaded with the trophies of our rifles. There was a feast for the whole garrison of four hundred men. I doubt whether a party of hunters could find that amount of large game in six days anywhere in North America at the present time. All the buffaloes have disappeared, and nearly all the deer, antelope and elk. The black-tailed deer was the best of all the large game except the mountain sheep, which was considered the choicest, richest, rarest meat the hunter could obtain. There is still very good hunting in the right season along the lakes of Minnesota, North Dakota and Manitoba; prairie chickens along the plains of Dakota and Nebraska; quail and prairie chickens in western Kansas and Indian Territory, and wild duck is found in Indian Territory, Texas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana. About the most interesting sport I have ever engaged in was the hunting of large wolves in the Indian Territory in 1875, where they were found in great numbers. A party of hunters, very often numbering from ten to twenty, and well mounted, would move out to a "divide" or high ridge of the rolling prairie, each with a greyhound or staghound held by a leash, while other men would be sent along through the timber in the ravines with deerhounds and bloodhounds to start the wolves out of the timber and onto the high ground. The moment they appeared and undertook to cross the prairie, a signal would be given and the dogs let loose; the result would be a grand chase of from three to five miles, winding up with a fierce fight. The large gray wolves were very powerful; you could hear their jaws snap a long distance away, and frequently they cut the dogs very badly. When any one dog had courage enough to attack, all the others would rush in, and I have frequently seen the whole pack upon one large wolf. There is, however, rarer sport to me in hunting the bear with a welltrained pack of dogs. Mr. Montague S. Stevens of New Mexico had, with a few of my own, a fine pack of dogs, composed of bloodhounds, fox terriers, staghounds, boarhounds and Russian wolfhounds. The first were used as trailers, and taken altogether they would tree or bring to bay any bear found in that country. In fact they fought the bear so furiously that he would pay little attention to the hunters, and permit them to approach with comparative safety. It is interesting sport, though very difficult and somewhat dangerous. The hunters are usually mounted on strong, hardy, sure-footed horses, as they are obliged to ride rapidly up and down the sides of precipitous mountains. The mountains in that part of the country range from seven to ten thousand feet above the sea-level, and are covered with scattering pine and cedar trees, with many rocks and ledges. Bear hunting is the most dangerous of all kinds of sport, and is uninteresting unless one is equipped with a well-trained pack of dogs; a pack used for no other purpose. Such dogs are never allowed to hunt any other game, such as deer or elk. Along the lowlands, through which course the tributaries of the great Missouri, the Arkansas and the Red Rivers, was to be found an abundant stock of fish, not of the finest quality it is true; while along the base of the mountains, the streams were alive with the finest mountain trout. In the Southwest-Kansas, the Indian Territory, Texas, and New Mexico, the wild turkey and quail were found in the greatest abundance. It is a singular fact that the Indians rarely utilized fish and small game; the large game was their chief dependence. Along the whole extent of the Rocky mountains were to be found game and fish in endless variety, bear, mountain lion or cougar, deer, elk and mountain sheep, while the streams abounded with delicious trout. On the Pacific Slope very much the same conditions prevail as to animal life, except that no trace of the buffalo is found on the west slope of the Rocky mountains. The streams of the far Northwest were found alive with trout and salmon of the finest quality, and there the Indians, unlike their brothers eastward of the Rocky mountains, used the salmon as their principal food. They took them in such quantities at certain seasons as to supply their needs for the entire year, the fish being dried and cured for that purpose. They also used meat, wild vegetables and berries for food. Still further north, in British Columbia and Alaska, we find the Indians living almost entirely upon fish, and their habits and character are consequently quite different from those of their carnivorous brethren of the plains. The game of the West has rapidly disappeared before the huntsman's rifle. It is a fair estimate that four million buffaloes were killed within the five years between 1874 and 1879, from what was known as the Southern herd, which roamed through northern Texas, the Indian Territory, Kansas and Nebraska. Between 1878 and 1883 the great Northern herd quite as numerous-roaming through the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana, was destroyed in like manner. The hunters received on an average from $2.50 to $3.50 per hide, to be shipped out of the country and sold for leather-making, belting, harness-making and for kindred purposes. Thousands of men were engaged in the enterprise. The most successful hunting parties consisted of a hunter and about six men known as strippers. The time usually selected for taking the buffaloes was just after they had been grazing in the morning, had gone to the water and then returned to the high ground, lying down to rest in bunches of from twenty to a hundred. The hunter, with the longest range rifle of the heaviest caliber he could obtain, would fire from the leeward side, so far away that the crack of the rifle could not be heard by the buffaloes, and being behind a bush or a bunch of grass, could not be seen. In that way he would kill from a dozen to a hundred a day, without disturbing the herd to any great extent. The buffalo receiving a mortal wound would bleed to death, while his neighbors, smelling the blood, would sometimes come near him and paw the ground, and so stand until they, too, would receive their death-wounds. The strip pers would then come up with ox teams, take off the hides, put them in the wagons, and transport them to the nearest railroad station, whence they were shipped to market. At one station alone on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad as many as 750,000 hides were shipped in one year. After taking the hide off the buffalo, the carcass would be poisoned in many cases, some yearling buffalo being generally selected, and next morning there might be found forty or fifty dead wolves lying scattered around, victims of the strychnine. In this way the large game was rapidly destroyed, together with countless numbers of wolves that had thrived only by preying upon them. This might seem like cruelty and wasteful extravagance, but the buffalo, like the Indian, stood in the way of civilization and in the path of progress, and the decree had gone forth that they must both give way. It was impossible to herd domestic stock in a country where they were constantly liable to be stampeded by the moving herds of wild animals. The same territory which a quarter of a century ago was supporting those vast herds of wild game, is now covered with domestic animals which afford the food supply for hundreds of millions of people in civilized countries. CHAPTER IX. THE INDIAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR. INDIAN UPRISING IN MINNESOTA-CAUSES LEADING THERETO-GOVERNOR RAMSEY'S INDIAN COUN- RGENT need of practically withdrawing the troops from the frontier, forced upon the government by the exigencies of the Civil War and the continuance of that contest for four years, gave the Indians encouragement as well as opportunity to acquire firearms and munitions of war which they would not otherwise have been able to obtain. The disastrous results were soon felt all along the frontier, especially in the Northwest, where occurred what is known as the "Minnesota Massacre of 1862," and in the Southwest, particularly in Arizona and New Mexico; and it became speedily apparent that whatever the pressure at the front, large bodies of volunteer troops must be located and maintained in the Indian country, sufficient to overawe the hostile tribes and keep them in subjection. The Indian uprising in Minnesota in the year 1862, like many others, was that of a people quiet and semi-civilized, to avenge real or imaginary wrongs. They suddenly rose and fell upon the unprotected settlements and destroyed upward of a thousand people-men, women and children. As speedily as possible a large force of troops was thrown against the hostiles, under the command of General Sibley, who conducted an energetic and successful campaign, resulting in the subjugation of such portions of the Sioux Indians as did not escape across the border into Canadian territory. The following extract from "Heard's History of the Sioux War" will exhibit some of the causes leading finally to that outbreak. The council referred to in the extract was held in November, 1852, and was of great importance, as bearing upon subsequent events. "The room was crowded with Indians and white men when Red Iron was brought in guarded by soldiers. He was about forty years old, tall and athletic; about six feet in his moccasins, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin compressed lips, and |