Anyone who will read the history of the United States after the Civil War will come upon a long series of campaigns of the United States army in the West against the American Indians. These Indians, as has already been said, constantly being more and more confined, had now only the great American desert and the Rocky Mountains to live upon. They existed there in enormous numbers. They hunted the almost limitless herds of buffalo and deer. They fought, whenever opportunity offered, whatever white men came upon them. The attempt of the government was to give the Indians certain territories on which they could live in different parts of that country. These territories were called Indian reservations, and some of them still exist; but at that time--that is, between 1870 and 1880--the Indians were still in their native wild civilization, and declined to be limited to these reservations. They had no desire to become farmers. They wanted to roam over the plains, and hunt, and fish, and live as they were born to live. They could not be made like white men. And hence the result was a series of campaigns which gradually exterminated most of them and killed the spirit of the others. One of these campaigns was the famous fight of General Custer, whose command was practically annihilated in the famous battle of Little Big Horn. Here again the qualities of Cody came into great demand. He was one of the greatest scouts in these Indian campaigns. His experiences, his fights, would number into the hundreds in a short decade. General Sheridan, who was put in command of the troops to quell the Indian uprising, made him the chief of his scouts, and during these years he was constantly at work leading the American troops against the Indians. Some time before he had acquired the name which now every boy in this country and almost every boy in the civilized world knows him by--"Buffalo Bill"--and the story of how this name was given to him is well worth the telling.