In 1856, when Frank North came to Nebraska, a young boy, he mingled fearlessly with the Indians along the Missouri in the region of Omaha, where our family first settled, learning their mode of warfare and living, and their language, which he spoke as fluently as his mother tongue. In 1861 he took a position as clerk and interpreter at the Pawnee reservation and by 1863 he had become known as a daring scout. The next year the building of the Union Pacific railroad was started, and as the work progressed westward the fierce Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and Sioux began attacking the laborers, until it seemed deadly peril to venture outside the camps. It was useless to call on the regular troops for help as the government needed them all to hold in check the armies of Lee and Johnston. A clipping from the Washington _Sunday Herald_, on this subject, states that "a happy thought occurred to Mr. Oakes Ames," the main spirit of the work. He sent a trusty agent to hunt up Frank North, who was then twenty-four years old. "What can be done to protect our working parties, Mr. North?" said Mr. Ames. "I have an idea," Mr. North answered. "If the authorities at Washington will allow me to organize a battalion of Pawnees and mount and equip them, I will undertake to picket your entire line and keep off other Indians. "The Pawnees are the natural enemies of all the tribes that are giving you so much trouble, and a little encouragement and drill will make them the best irregular horse you could desire." This plan was new but looked feasible. Accordingly Mr. Ames went to Washington, and, after some effort, succeeded in getting permission to organize a battalion of four hundred Pawnee warriors, who should be armed as were the U.S. cavalry and drilled in such simple tactics as the service required, and my uncle was commissioned a major of volunteers and ordered to command them. The newspaper clipping also says: "It would be difficult to estimate the service of Major North in money value." General Crook once said, in speaking of him, "Millions of government property and hundreds of lives were saved by him on the line of the Union Pacific railroad, and on the Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana frontiers." There is much to be said in his praise, but I did not intend writing a eulogy, rather to tell of the stories which have come down to me, with which he and my other relatives were so closely connected.