While lawless white men were thus destroying the buffalo, the Indians themselves were suffering for food. The agent for the Cheyenne reports that for nearly four months preceding the outbreak the rations had fallen short, and expresses the opinion that if there had been a full supply he could have held the tribe from the warpath. At the same time they were being systematically robbed of their stock by organized bands of horse thieves. The immediate cause of the outbreak by the Cheyenne in May, 1874, was the stealing by these men of forty-three valuable ponies belonging to the chief, Little-robe. In attempting to recover them Little-robe's son was dangerously wounded, in revenge for which the Cheyenne soon after killed a member of a surveying party in the Kiowa country and at once began open hostilities (_Report, 34_; _Battey, 4_). [Illustration: Photo by Bell, 1888 FIG. 51--Gui-pägo or Lone-wolf, present head-chief of the Kiowa] Agent Miles thus tersely sums up the provocation: The lack of power to administer the law--to remove improper characters from this reservation, to break up the various bands of dissolute white men, horse and cattle thieves, known to be operating in our vicinity--is the prime cause that may be assigned for the serious outbreak among the Cheyennes on this reservation. As elsewhere stated, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes were assured by the President, on their recent visit to Washington, that improper white men and buffalo hunters should be kept from their country at all hazards, and they very naturally expected that some effort would be made to keep that promise; but they have looked in vain, and the Cheyennes, being the most restless of the two tribes, grew tired and endeavored to avenge their own wrongs. The result of such a proceeding could have but one ending, and that was to bring them into conflict with the general government (_Report, 35_). THE COMANCHE MEDICINE-MAN