"This is the way in which we had been situated out there. I have been in command of a body of troops at Fort Larned or Fort Lyon for upwards of two years. About two years ago in September the Indians were professing to be perfectly friendly. These were the Cheyennes, the Comanches, the Apaches, the Arapahoes, the Kiowas, encamped at different points on the Arkansas River between Fort Larned and Fort Lyon. Trains were going up to Fort Lyon frequently and scarcely a train came in but had some complaint to make about the Indians. I recollect that one particular day three trains came in to the post and reported to me that the Indians had robbed them of their provisions. We at the post had to issue provisions to them constantly. Trains that were carrying government freight to New Mexico would stop there and get their supplies replenished on account of the Indians having taken theirs on the road. "At one time I took two pieces of artillery and 125 men, and went down to meet the Indians. As soon as I got there they were apparently friendly. A Kiowa chief perhaps would say to me that his men were perfectly friendly, and felt all right towards the whites, but the Arapahoes were very bad Indians. Go to the Arapahoe camp, and they would perhaps charge everything upon the Comanches; while the Comanches would charge it upon the Cheyennes; yet each band there was professing friendship towards us.... "When the Indians took their prisoners (in fact, however, they generally took no prisoners) near Simmering Spring, they killed ten men. I was told by Captain Davis, of the California volunteers, that the Indians cut off the heads of the men after they had scalped them, and piled them in a pile on the ground, and danced around them, and kicked their bodies around over the ground, etc. It is the general impression of the people of that country that the only way to fight Indians is to fight them as they fight us; if they scalp and mutilate the bodies we must do the same.