In a few months the grass was up and a change came o'er the spirit of the dream. Hostilities had begun on the plains, and in order that the innocent might not be punished with the guilty, the friendly tribes along the eastern border had been forbidden to go out into the buffalo country. This deprivation of accustomed privileges naturally caused great dissatisfaction among the friendly Indians, who had come to depend on their annual buffalo hunt to eke out their scanty food supply, and they complained bitterly that the government had been feeding and clothing the hostiles, while they themselves had been left to starve. In a strong letter their agent writes that, while he has a desire to shield all Indians from wrong and severe treatment, yet "lead, and plenty of it, is what the Kiowas want and must have before they will behave." He denounces them as murderous thieves, and says that he has had personal experience of their insolence and outrages (_Report, 13_). The incidents of this war noted on the calendar are the encounter at Fort Larned, in which the Kiowa ran off the horses of the soldiers, and the attack on a Kiowa camp by a detachment of troops and Ute Indians under command of Kit Carson (see the calendar). From the agent's report it appears that the Indians had begun hostilities in the summer simultaneously on the Platte and the Arkansas, and up to September had killed a number of people and run off several thousand head of horses, mules, and cattle. Communication between the Colorado settlements and the Missouri had been almost entirely cut off, the overland coaches had to be supplied with large escorts, and emigrant trains were compelled to combine for safety. It was thought that all the tribes of the plains were on the warpath together. The Indians were well mounted, knew the whole country perfectly, and so far, in every contest on anything like equal terms, had proven themselves a match for the white soldiers. As nearly the whole available force of the government was then employed in suppressing the rebellion, no additional troops could be sent to the frontier, and Governor Evans of Colorado asked and received permission to raise a force of volunteers against the hostiles. It was the opinion of many persons, including army officers stationed in the country, that the whole trouble might have been averted had the Indians been properly treated by the whites (_Report, 14_).