since only officers in the infantry were mounted. The group of Indians around the fire (in the right centerground) cannot be accounted for. [Illustration: Figure 7.--Fort Harker, Kansas; south side. (_USNM 384186; Smithsonian photo 38986._)] Stieffel's two pictures of the meeting of the Government's peace commissioners with the Indians at the general tribal rendezvous on Big Medicine Lodge Creek in October 1867 (figs. 3, 4) are his most important from a historical standpoint, especially the one of Satanta, the Kiowa chief, addressing the meeting.[29] Indian unrest during and immediately after the Civil War caused by the ever-increasing white migration to the West had grown to such proportions that in 1867 the Congress launched an all-out effort to establish a lasting peace on the frontier. The plan was to persuade the warring tribes to sign treaties whereby they would move onto reservations where they would be undisturbed by the whites and, in turn, would cease to molest the frontier settlements.[30] The Indians concerned with the Medicine Lodge treaty were the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe. This treaty is unusually important, as it changed the entire status of these tribes from that of independence with free and unrestricted range over the entire plains area to that of dependence on the Government with confinement to the limits of a reservation with constant civilian and military supervision. For the Indians it was the beginning of the end. [Illustration: Figure 8.--Fort Keogh, Montana. (_USNM 384189; Smithsonian photo 37925._)] Upon its arrival at Fort Harker following the action of September 23, Company K had been assigned as escort for the commissioners, thus Stieffel's presence at Council Grove. It was a colorful gathering, with some 5,000 Indians on hand. First came a series of speeches. Then the treaty was drawn up and explained to the Indians. They were to retire to assigned reservations, cease attacking the whites, and permit railroads to be built across the plains. In return the reservations were to be closed to the white buffalo hunters and the tribes were to be issued certain annuities and provided with farming implements, seeds, churches, and schools. In short, the Indians were to be forced to "walk the white man's road." When the turn came for the Indians to reply, several chiefs responded, the most notable being the Kiowa chief, Satanta, or "White Bear" (fig. 11), one of the most remarkable individuals in his tribe's history. Speaking for all, Satanta made an unusually strong impression on most of those present, Stieffel among them, for this is the incident which he chose to depict[31] (fig. 3).