SHERIDAN'S TROOPERS.* Tins book has the merit of being interesting
to two distinct • classes of readers ; a charming book of adventure for boys satiated -with Captain Ballantyne's narratives, and on the look-out for -something quite as exciting, but which they can dignify with the -name of history ; the volume is also worth the attention of the smaller class, who carefully study the question of which in rough
• and ready form it treats. We get here, it is true, no subtle :analysis of the great problem of the retreat of the red man before the white, come no whit nearer the solution of the great difficulty, .why should these savages disappear before civilization, instead of .accepting and being moulded and transformed by it ? but what we -do get here, as far as we may submit our minds to joretty strong internal evidence of veracity, is a clear, graphic description of facts as they are, and as they are likely to be in those vast wild plains west of the Missouri, across which American industry has already carried the wires of the telegraph and the lines of the iron highway.
* Sheridan's Troopers on the Borders: a Winter Campaign on the Plains. By De B Randolph Kelm. Philadelphia: Claxton and Co. 1870. Leaving philosophers to discuss the wisdom or the morality of extirpating the Indian, we will glance over the facts brought before us in these pages. In what, in the language of civilization, we are wont to call the interests of the world, it was necessary to connect by railway and by telegraph the eastern and western cities of North America ; between them lay, like a huge boulder in the path of progress, the vast hunting-plains of the Indian. These savage tribes, seeing with dismay the entrance of the white man into their very mountain fastnesses, among their chosen hunting- grounds, and by the rivers from whose waters they draw much of their food, became yet more restless and troublesome, and im- possible as it was even for a moment to think of staying the advancing tide, yet in 1867 Congress determined if possible to find a peaceable solution of the great difficulty. The system known under the head of "Reservations" was commenced, and "it was pro- posed to remove the Indians from the routes of travel and settlement, and to maintain them at the expense of the national Government." Two extensive "Reservations" were accordingly laid out, one to lie north of the State of Nebraska and south of the Missouri river ; the other south of the State of Kansas and west of the Arkansas river. Our author enters into a very full and clear description of this plan, the treaties it involved, and the system generally ; we can only briefly cull the results :—At first the natural indolence of the Indian inclined him to the new plan ; the security of railways and settlements was guaranteed, and the principal tribes (we spare our readers their outlandish names) agreed to take the lauds assigned, with all the other good things with which the offer was accompanied, but they could not quite view with an easy mind the encroachments of the white men on their hunting-grounds, and "the Sioux took a decided stand, and in very plain terms alluded to the consequences of the whites persisting in opening the road through the Powder-River country, declaring that that section constituted the only hunting-grounds they had left, and they would defend them ; it was by this route it was proposed to open communi- cation with the settlements of the Far West." In an evil hour, the Government recognizing the fact that the construction of the Platte Railroad had obviated the necessity for the other route, complied with the wishes of the Indian. Their treaties at once became worth so much waste-paper. The Indian, unable to com- prehend a compliance not the result of fear, was elated with a sense of triumph ; depredations began anew, runners were sent to communicate with the other tribes, a hostile attitude was once more resumed, and the old problem had to be solved anew, but with the old result ; the red man could not be suffered to bar the progress of the white, and thus it came about that General, then Major- General, Sheridan organized and carried out the campaign, with the narrative of which these pages are filled. Contrary to all precedent, he determined to commence and carry on operations in the winter months, when he could take the Indians at great disadvantage, and give them a convincing lesson that the great barrier of winter storms and bitter cold, which hitherto they had relied on as such in- vincible protectors, were difficulties the white man's soldiers would accept, brave, and overcome. The instructions delivered by Sheridan to his men at one point of the campaign were in exact accord- ance with what we can imagine to be the mental calibre of the man who planned such an expedition. "The instructions were brief and simple, 'To proceed south, in the direction of the Antelope Hills, thence towards Washita River, the supposed winter seat of the hostile tribes ; to destroy their villages and ponies, to kill or hang all warriors, and bring back all women and children.'" "This in a nutshell," adds our author, "was the Sheridan policy towards refractory savages."
It is always difficult to speak absolutely, yet it is bard to conceive men carrying out such orders in the interests of civilization without themselves becoming little less brutalized than the savages they seek to extirpate ; and yet, with a change of names and milder forms of speech, Europe, perhaps, could show us something very like it. The incidents of the campaign were exciting enough, fighting was agreeably varied by hunting, and the descriptions of expeditions against buffaloes and wolves are very vivid. The former animals seem to share the fate of the Indian. Where wild tribes are unmolested, buffaloes congregate in enormous herds of many thousands, all obeying certain admir- able arrangements for the organization and well-being of the whole, made among themselves by aid of something called instinct, but which looks, on paper at least, uncommonly like reason. We have
said their arrangements are admirable, but we must except the custom by which, under buffalo law, old, superannuated, or infirm buffaloes are expelled from the herd, and made to do duty as hermit
sentinels to warn the rest of the approach of danger, and fall first victims to the enemy. Mr. Keim details curious little facts in which sometimes Indians, wild plains, buffaloes, and civilization get mixed together, striking us with a keen sense of the grotesque. Unlike the early settlers, who with their own hands cut down the forests of New York or Montreal, themselves the link between the Old World and the New, the settlers who may even now be contemplating a log hut on some of these wild plains will find all sense of absolute isolation destroyed by the Iron Horse. Here at one of these railway stations is a placard :—
" RAILWAY Excuastox AND BUFFALO Ilusr.—An excursion train will leave Leavenworth at 8 a.m., and Lawrence, at 10 a.m., for Sheridan, on Tuesday, October 27, 1868, and return on Friday. This train will stop at the principal Mations both going and returning. Ample time will be had for a grand Buffalo Hunt on the Plains. Buffaloes are so numerous along the road that they are shot from the cars nearly every day. On our last excursion our party killed twenty buffaloes in a hunt of six hours. All passengers can have refreshments on the cars at reasonable prices."
The offer, adds Mr. Keim, was very tempting, for a quarter of a century hence buffalo and Indian will both have disappeared, driven to the most inaccessible and uninhabitable sections, if not entirely exterminated.
Some of the natural features of the country strike us as full of interest, both to the intended settler and also to the naturalist. For instance, when the mind is dwelling somewhat despondingly on the apparent barrenness of great portions of these vast regions, it is well, as Mr. Keim is continually telling us, not to overlook the buffalo grass. Almost all other vegetation succumbs before the hot winds of summer, but this grass drives its roots far down into the earth and thus derives the moisture that it needs ; it is never more than an inch in height, and resembles moss rather than grass.
Mr. Keim says an ordinary observer would consider the country covered with it to be worthless as a desert, but that experienced frontiersmen declare that stock grazing on these plains may be made a profitable and extensive employment ; "if," he adds, "this should be found correct, the plains would graze enough cattle to feed half-a-dozen States." It is, at all events, certain that this grass is sufficient for the sustenance of vast herds of buffaloes, of whom our author observes that they are in a wonderfully fine condition ; but the country is not all moss-covered waste, although in many regions the monotony seems to weary the traveller's eye for days together, and all steer their way by compass. "Except," says Mr. Keim, "with a perfect knowledge of keeping the points by astro- nomical objects, it would be as impossible to traverse these plains except by some unerring guide, as to navigate the ocean without the needle." But there were places when an entirely different pro- spect met their view ; the bald hills rose on all sides, with their in- tervening valleys filled with red gravel, rocks and huge holders, in the midst of which, there would be no sign of animal life, no sound to break the awful stillness, while at other points masses of gypsum in every stage of crystallization and of every variety of tint, from pale pink to deep crimson, would meet the eye, at times masses of it of alabaster whiteness resembling at a distance exten- sive banks of snow and ice.
Of course in describing scenes so far outside the beaten track, the narrator has it pretty much his own way, and we are at the mercy of his veracity ; but arguing from the known to the un- known, we think our author has avoided much of the exaggeration so common to travellers,—though we confess we should in one in- stance, where he tells us of forests of oak thirty acres in extent, never more than twelve inches high, demur, if we were not afraid of encountering the answer given by the famous miller to King John.
We could willingly linger longer on some of the scenes of beauty with which these else desolate regions are interspersed, but our space forbids, and the greater part of this volume is devoted to far other themes,—descriptions of the dark corners of the earth full of the habitations of cruelty, details of the manners and cus- toms of these savages which make it impossible to regret their probable extirpation. Through scenes of rough and daring ad- venture, braving a pitiless climate and a yet more pitiless foe, with their lives in their hands, this band of troopers under Sheridan did the work appointed them, and perhaps few who can dis- passionately study the subject, with all its various bearings, but will be glad to think, did it successfully. Yet knowing the destiny
they one and all expect for the Indian, and have so desperately striven to bring about, we confess there is something, at least so far as these savages are concerned, which savours to us of bitter, though perhaps unconscious irony, in the concluding sentences of this book :— "Such was the end of the campaign before the close of the spring of 1869. The purposes of war were fully realized. The savages were severely punished. The belief in their security in the winter season was shattered beyond a question, even in their stubborn minds. All the tribes south of the Platte were forced upon their reservations. Thus, by the powerful and efficient aid of Sheridan's Troopers, the wild tribes, were made accessible to the generous heart of humanity, and the tem- pering influences of industry, education, and Christianity."
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