The coaches were strange, heavy vehicles with very large wheels, made unusually strong, since they traveled the roughest roads imaginable. Passengers could ride either inside or out, but no one ever thought of going without being fully armed, for day or night the coach was likely to be attacked. One of the most famous trips was made by Buffalo Bill from Fort Kearney to Plum Creek. It was a difficult task to manage six horses and at the same time keep a keen eye open for Indians. Owing to Buffalo Bill’s skill the stage usually got through, but in the hands of other less competent drivers the tale was often a sad one, with heavy loss of money and good men killed or wounded. [Illustration: THE WAY MAIL SOMETIMES CAME IN] THE GOVERNMENT’S FIGHT AGAINST THE INDIANS Although the United States Government had maintained frontier forts, it was forced finally to undertake important aggressive campaigns against the Indians. The white settlements encroached more and more on the Indian territory, and the red man seeing nothing ahead but the destruction of his cherished hunting grounds by these intruders, aimed to destroy every white man he saw, but inch by inch the savages were crowded back from the land that was rightfully theirs into a cramped and limited area. [Illustration: SITTING BULL] The Indian knew no law but that of simple justice, and in his dealings he had always wanted to be honest. On every hand, however, he now met cruelty, dishonesty and broken faith, and he learned to think of the white man as a terrible crushing power fit only to be done away with, and this finally became the keynote of his existence. In 1862 there was an outbreak of the powerful Sioux tribes due directly to the failure of our government to keep its pledges to the Indians, who were depending upon the promised money due them in payment for their land. They were aroused to a sense of this injustice by an actual want of the necessities of life, for robbed of his hunting and fishing ground, the Indian knew no way to get a living. Some say that he should have tilled the soil like the white man, but it must not be forgotten that having lived for centuries in a savage state, he was not fitted to meet the demands of civilization. The great Civil War was raging and draining the country of its fighting men. Knowing only one way to right their wrongs, the Indians seized this unique opportunity and on the morning of August 18th, 1862, a party of one hundred and fifty Sioux, under Chief Little Crow, began a massacre of the white settlers on both sides of the Minnesota River.