“But the feeling over the buffalo was only one of the causes of the Plains wars. To understand other causes, one should consider the Indian as he was found by the first white men, and compare him with what he was after his association with the Whites for a term of years. It can clearly be seen, by such a comparison, that a great change took place, in that time, in the Indian’s attitude and sentiments toward the Whites, and this change could not have been due to anything but the influence of association. The redskin acquired knowledge, also confidence in himself. Then followed hostile feelings awakened by the mismanagement and needless cruelty of the Whites. The Indian seemed to learn and adopt every vice of the Whites but not one of their virtues. “When I first crossed the Plains in 1859, we met several bands of Indians. In fact we struck about the first and much the biggest number at the great bend of the Arkansas River, a little east of where the town of Great Bend now stands and from there on we met them up to seventy-five miles west of old Fort Lyon in eastern Colorado. There was no military fort there then, nor any west of Fort Riley to Fort Garland in the mountains, and there was no need of any, for the Indians were supposed to be friendly, which indeed they were. This part of the country was the chief resort of the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Prairie Apaches. Here, on the Arkansas River, near the present site of Great Bend, is where they all congregated. Up to 1864, all the Indians mentioned were considered peaceable and were so to a great extent. When they caught parties of Whites south of the Arkansas River (which was sacred ground to them, where no trespassers were allowed) there was trouble. Only traders were allowed in that region, and they had to be well known and familiar with the Indians to be safe. If an unknown trader ventured down there, he was stripped of his goods, whipped severely, often killed, and his wagons burned. But along the great Santa Fe Trail small parties of Whites, and even single individuals, went through without being molested, though I have seen these peaceable Indians, at such times, treated with the utmost contempt and actual abuse by the white travelers.