The campaign was vigorously prosecuted during the winter and into the spring of 1875. The forces engaged consisted of eight troops of the Sixth cavalry under Majors Charles E. Compton and James Biddle, four troops of the Eighth cavalry under Major Price, and four companies of the Fifth infantry, the whole under the immediate command of Colonel (now Major-General) Nelson A. Miles. During this period the troops were constantly engaged in scouting over the territory involved, keeping the Indians so constantly on the move that they were unable to lay in any stock of provisions. This active work was continued by the troops upon the exposed and barren plains of that region during a winter of unprecedented severity, and as the season advanced, the difficulty of supplying the necessary forage and subsistence increased so that no little hardship and privation resulted, but the troops bore everything with fortitude and without complaint. By extraordinary effort enough supplies reached the troops to enable them to remain in the field until their work was done, and at length, early in March, 1875, the southern Cheyennes, completely broken down, gave up the contest, and under their principal chief, Stone-calf, the whole body of that tribe, with a trifling exception, surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. At the same time they restored the two elder captive Germaine girls. They gave up also their horses, bows and arrows, with some guns, but secretly hid most of their valuable firearms (_Record, 8_). The main body of the Cheyenne surrendered to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas H. Neil, Sixth cavalry, near the agency (Darlington), on March 6, 1875, and were at once disarmed and placed under guard, their ponies being confiscated and sold. Their agent says: A more wretched and poverty-stricken community than these people presented after they were placed in the prison camp it would be difficult to imagine. Bereft of lodges and the most ordinary cooking apparatus; with no ponies nor other means of transportation for food or water; half starved and with scarcely anything that could be called clothing, they were truly objects of pity; and for the first time the Cheyenne seemed to realize the power of the government and their own inability to cope successfully therewith (_Report, 48_). On the 27th of April they were formally transferred from the charge of the military to that of the agent and declared to be again at peace with the government. Throughout this whole period the Arapaho camped near the agency, in spite of short rations and all the other difficulties of their position, had maintained untarnished their treaty obligations. PRISONERS SENT TO FLORIDA