On the Border With Crook - ERBzine

DISAFFECTION OF THE INDIANS. 243companies of the Ninth and Fourteenth Infantry to guard supplytrains, was employed in furnishing the requisite protection to thegeologists, and in obtaining such additional information in regard to the topography of the country, the best lines for wagonroads, and sites for such posts as might be necessary in the future.of theThis was under the command of Colonel R. I.Dodge,theTwenty-third Infantry, and made a very complete search overthe whole of the hills, mapping the streams and the trend ofranges, and opening up one of the most picturesque regions onthe face of the globe.It was never a matter of surprise to me t*hat the Cheyennes,whose corn-fields were once upon the Belle Fourche, the streamwhich runs around the hills on the north side, should have becomefrenziedby the report that these lovely valleys were to be takenfrom them whether they would or no. In the summer of 1876the Government sent a commission, of which Senator William B.Allison, of Iowa, was chairman, and the late Major-GeneralAlfred H. Terry, a member, to negotiate with the Sioux for thecession of the Black Hills, but neither Sioux nor Oheyennes werein the humor to negotiate. There appeared to be a very largeelement among the Indians which would sooner have war thanpeace all sorts of failures to observe; previous agreements werebrought up, and the advocates of peace were outnumbered. Oneday it looked very much as if a general melee was about to beprecipitated. The hostile element, led by " Little Big Man/'shrieked for war, and f 'Little Big Man " himself was haranguinghis followers that that was as good a moment as any to beginshooting. The courage and coolness of two excellent officers,Egan and Crawford, the former of the Second, the latter of theThird Cavalry, kept the savages from getting too near the Commissioners : their commands formed line, and with carbines atan ' ' advance " remained perfectly motionless, ready to chargein upon the Indians should the latter begin an attack. Egan hasoften told me that he was apprehensive lest the accidental discharge of a carbine or a rifle on one side or the other shouldprecipitate a conflict in which much blood would surely be shed.Egan has been many years dead worn out in service and poorCrawford was killed by Mexican irregular troops at the momentthat he had surprised and destroyed the village of the ChiricahuaApache chief "Geronimo," in the depths of the Sierra Madre,