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Show THE NOBLE RED MAN. 545 them rapidly gathered all the discontented young braves from the agencies. As near as can be determined the latter chief began the season with eight hundred braves the former with nearly* twice as many. Their position was the best that military art could have se-lected. From it the affluents of the Yellowstone ran northward; the lower affluents of the Missouri eastward ; on the east and north it was doubly protected by the " bad lands ;" north- west and west were rugged mountains, and southward the high plains stretched for many hundred miles. Around the extreme outer edge of the hostile coun-try, from north- west and north to north- east and east, ran the Mis-souri ; on that stream were located all the agencies, and from them, through " friendly " Indians, went a constant stream of supplies to the warriors. By careful examination of the books ( after the damage had been done), it was proved that these bands received in five months 56 cases of arms, containing 1,120 Winchester and Remington rifles, and 413,000 rounds of patent ammunition, besides considerable quan-tities of loose powder, lead and primers. It takes many such lessons as this to convince the American people that this machine we call gov-ernment is the most awkward, expensive and inefficient of all human inventions ; and yet the lesson is not learned, for, in spite of daily multiplying evidences of its inherent inefficiency, new parties start up every year urging that government should run our schools and churches, our mills, mines and workshops, our social, moral and in-dustrial institutions. Daily is the lesson thrust upon us, that whatever government does is done wrong ; and daily we hear fresh demands that government should do things which it was never organized to do. The plain English of the foregoing figures is, that government first armed the savages with repeating rifles, then sent an inferior force to attack them on ground of their own choosing. Three columns were to proceed from three points and converge on the hostile region : Gibbon eastward from Fort Ellis, Montana ; Crook northward from Fort Fetterman ; and Terry westward from Fort Abe Lincoln, just across the Missouri from Bismarck, Dakota. Of course they could not start at the same time. General Crook, with seven hundred men and forty days' supplies, started the 1st of March and reached and destroyed the village of Crazy Horse, on Powder River, the 17th of March. But the Indians got away with most of their ani-mals and supplies. The Gibbon column did not figure greatly till the junction with Terry on the Yellowstone. Meanwhile the Terry column, in which General Custer was the leading spirit, was delayed in a score of ways. It could not start as early as that of Crook any- 35 |
