"During the time from July 26th, the day on which Lieutenant Wand's train was attacked, to the 21st of December, on which Lieutenant Colonel Fetterman with his command of eighty officers and men were overpowered and massacred, they (the Indians) killed ninety-one enlisted men and five officers of our army, and killed fifty-eight citizens, and wounded twenty more, and captured and drove away three hundred and six oxen and cows, three hundred and four mules, and one hundred and sixty-one horses. During this time they appeared in front of Fort Phil Kearney making hostile demonstrations and committing hostile acts fifty-one different times, and attacked nearly every train and person that attempted to pass over the Montana road." The figures in the foregoing report do not include the great loss of human life and of live stock and other property that occurred in connection with the massacre in December. It was early in this period that the scoundrels at Fort Laramie, who should have known better, assured us and other travelers less fortunate than we were, that it would be quite safe for emigrants to proceed. It may be asked what motive could inspire these roseate but unreliable reports. The answer is simple when one becomes somewhat familiar with the type of many of the men who on the part of the Government conducted these highly important negotiations; and when one realizes the additional fact that the opportunity for personal profit overshadowed everything, while the dignity of the Government and the principles of equity were disregarded. In the second volume of his _Forty Years a Fur Trader_, Larpenteur devotes an entire chapter to a sketch of the many Indian agents with whom he was familiar who served the Government as "the fathers of the Indians" during those many years. The majority of those whose names he gives are stated by him to be "drunken gamblers." "Some were interested in the fur trade" and therefore were using the great authority of the United States Government to further their personal ends. "Some were ignorant beaver trappers," but not one of them, according to Larpenteur's reports, seems to have possessed those qualifications which would make for "the moral and intellectual advancement" of the wards of the nation so prominently urged in the President's message. In fact, the Indian agent should be a man of probity instead of a man whom the Indians openly declared to be a liar, and certainly he should not influence an agreement for the profit of the post sutler, who has the exclusive trading privilege at the post.