The feud which began on the Atlantic coast hundreds of years before, was destined to end in the far North-West, away up in a corner of the United States then almost wholly unknown to the White man, an angle of territory bounded on the west by the Rockies, and on the north by what formerly was known as Rupert’s Land--British territory. The immediate cause of the trouble which led up to the massacre of Custer and his battalion was one which had often before provoked active hostilities. It was the refusal of sundry bands of Indians to settle down on the reservations placed at the disposal of the Indians by the United States Government. The Indians resented the attempt to confine them to restricted districts. The Red man of the prairie had been, from time immemorial, a notorious nomad. On his lean, shaggy, ungainly pony, his bow and quiver slung across his back, his buckskin breeches and shirt fringed with horsehair and painted in gaudy colours, his long, greasy black hair stuck full of the feathers of the turkey, hawk and eagle, he had for centuries roamed the vast prairie at will: now fighting his hereditary foe, and again camping for weeks at a time on the trail of the mighty herds of buffalo in their wanderings over the boundless prairie. For ages the chafings of restriction were unknown to him, until freedom had become almost as necessary to the savage of the plains as the air itself. This he enjoyed, until one day the advance guard of civilisation, a grizzly trapper, dressed in leather, and carrying a flintlock under his arm, peered out of the bushes and saw in astonishment the great rolling prairie, the home of the buffalo and the Sioux. The hardy pioneer soon followed, restless, and ever pressing westward; and one day, the Sioux, sitting astride his barebacked pony, saw in amazement the long train of white-topped waggons--the prairie schooner--drawn by oxen, trailing westward through the tall grass, and realised that his ancient fastness had been invaded. Immediately there began massacres on the one hand and retaliation on the other. The Sioux, the Bedouins of the prairie, were gradually driven back and back in the process. They strained fiercely at the bonds, but were unable to break them. [Illustration: “UNTIL ONE DAY A GRIZZLY TRAPPER PEERED OUT OF THE BUSHES.”]