Fort Hayes was garrisoned mostly with negro soldiers. No buildings had been erected at that time, and we unloaded our supplies in the open prairie, where guards had been stationed to protect them. The timber for the buildings was being hauled from Fort Harker.
Our next trip was to Fort Wallace, with Government supplies, the distance being considerably greater than from Fort Harker to Fort Hayes. We always had an escort of soldiers, as there was constant danger of meeting an Indian war party.
In August, 1867, we were sent to Fort Lyon, and on this trip we saw thousands of buffaloes. The breeding season was now approaching its close, and at night and early morning could be heard the constant, low thunder of the bulls, their grunting rising into a roar that was one of the most striking of the natural phenomena of the Plains country. The calves, by this time, were alert, active little fellows, closely guarded by their mothers. Later in the season, all the bulls would segregate themselves from the cows, to range apart until the next breeding season. West of Fort Dodge we saw Indians in war paint, and expected to be attacked, but the rascals veered round us and went on their way.
Fort Hayes was on a tributary of the Smoky Hill River; old Fort Zarah, on Walnut Creek; Fort Larned on Pawnee Fork, and Fort Harker on Big Creek. All these forts were being remodeled and improved. In this way we put in all that summer, hauling supplies to one fort or the other, and when not engaged in this, we hauled rock for the foundations of the buildings.
Along in October, 1867, while several Government trains were at Fort Harker, waiting for orders, we were notified to make ready to accompany a party of peace commissioners that had been authorized to treat with several of the main plains tribes of Indians in the Southwest, at Medicine Lodge, Kas. These negotiations were afterwards known as the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Like most other treaties with these tribes, it was soon broken.
Several trains, with a part of ours, were to accompany this expedition. I was eager to go, but as no orders had been given to my outfit, I was fearful that I might be left behind. Here was the opportunity I had long looked for – to see a big gathering of Indians close at hand, without danger of getting scalped. I had almost given up in despair, when an orderly galloped up from headquarters, saying that two more wagons must be sent forward at once. It was now 6 o'clock in the evening. Simpson, our wagon-master, approached me and said:
"Billy, you and Frickie (Frickie drove the wagon next to mine) get ready at once and go into Fort Harker."
As a rule, nothing ever greatly excited me in my frontier days, but I am bound to admit that I was now going round and round, so overjoyed was I at my good luck. My agitation came near causing me to be left behind.
I ran as quickly as possible to where my mules were eating their grain, and without halting jerked the harness from the rack to throw it onto the lead mule. With both feet this mule kicked me squarely in the small of the back. I dropped as if I had been struck with an axe, and found myself partly paralyzed, and scarcely able to move. Recovering slightly, I regained my feet, but found that I could not straighten my body. I was game, however. Calling Frickie, I told him what had happened, and asked him to help me harness my mules, and not to say a word to anybody about my being hurt. Were it known that I had been kicked, I might be sent to the hospital. Frickie was a good fellow, and I was soon on my way to the Fort. By next morning I was in fairly good shape.
Night had come by the time we reached Fort Harker. We had to load and then drive about three miles to camp, on the Smoky Hill. The last two wagons were loaded with ammunition for a small Gatling gun, not an undesirable equipment on Indian peace expeditions in those days.
We pulled out bright and early next morning for Plum Creek, where there was a small road-ranch. Next day we reached Fort Zarah on Walnut Creek and on the third day we went on up the Arkansas and crossed it about seven miles below Fort Larned. We reached Medicine Lodge on the fourth day, where the treaty was to be held.
All along the way on this trip we were traveling through countless numbers of buffaloes. I remember seeing a wounded buffalo cow followed by six big lobo wolves. No hoofed animal could withstand these savage beasts – they were a terror to other wild life on the Plains. Wantonly, several buffaloes had been shot, and left lying to rot on the ground. An orderly came riding down the line with strict orders, that if another man in the outfit fired another shot at a buffalo he would be placed in irons.
Between the Arkansas River and Medicine Lodge we were met by a number of noted Indian chiefs, mounted upon their finest horses and arrayed in their most splendid costumes. They carried themselves with dignity and in every feature was revealed their racial pride and their haughty contempt of the white man. Among them I recall Satanta, Kicking Bird, and Black Kettle.
Satanta, chief of the Kiowas, rode a big black horse, and presented a magnificent appearance. It was because of his complaint that the order had been issued against the killing of buffaloes – a complaint that lay at the very heart of the grievances of the Indian against the white man in frontier days. He declared that the buffaloes were the property of himself and his people, and to destroy the buffalo meant the destruction of the Indian. Leading a nomadic life, which prevented his tilling the soil, even if he had wished to engage in agriculture, which he did not, the Indian saw that he would be deprived of his principal and most necessary food – buffalo meat – if the buffaloes were killed.
At a later day General Phil. Sheridan, to subdue and conquer the Plains tribes for all time, urged and practiced the very thing that Satanta was fearful might happen. In the early 70's, the state legislatures of Kansas and Colorado, listening to the appeal of the Indians, through sympathetic white persons, enacted laws to stop the slaughtering of the buffaloes, General Sheridan at that time was in command of the Military Department of the Southwest, with headquarters at San Antonio. The Texas legislature, in session at Austin, was at the point of declaring against the merciless slaughter of buffaloes that was then under way in the Staked Plains and Panhandle regions. General Sheridan is said to have told the legislators that the state should give to every buffalo-hunter a bronze medal, on one side of which should be a dead buffalo, and on the other, a discouraged Indian, adding:
"These men have done more in the last year to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary; and it is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but, for the sake of a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle, and the festive cowboy, who follows the hunter as a second fore-runner of an advanced civilization."
The Texas legislature accepted General Sheridan's advice. The Texans as a people were readily disposed to agree with that point of view, for in no State did the Plains Indians commit crimes more cruel and horrible than in Texas.
On our way to Medicine Lodge our train of sixty wagons was strung out for a distance of about two miles, accompanied by a strong escort of soldiers.
The members of this Indian Peace Commission were: N. G. Taylor, Commissioner of Indian Affairs; John B. Henderson, United States Senator; General William Tecumseh Sherman; General W. L. Harney; John B. Sanborn; General A. H. Terry; S. F. Tappan, and General C. C. Augur.
Among the notable chiefs were: Satanta, Kicking Bird, Black Kettle, Medicine Arrow, and Lone Wolf. Black Kettle was then at the height of his power, but soon to meet the death he had so often inflicted. He led the Cheyenne raid in the valley of the Solomon River in August, 1868, and had been in the Sand Creek fight in Colorado, November, 1864, where Colonel Chivington, commanding a regiment of Colorado troops massacred a lot of Cheyennes. I camped on that battleground in 1870 while hunting buffaloes. The spot was still strewn with bones of the dead, and the trees were yet scarred by the hail of bullets that had come from the guns of the soldiers, who killed old and young, women and children, without mercy, and