On August 6, 1867, the Commission organized at St. Louis and discussed plans for getting into touch with the tribes with whom it had to treat. "The first difficulty presenting itself was to secure an interview with the chiefs and leading warriors of these hostile tribes. They were roaming over an immense country, thousands of miles in extent, and much of it unknown even to hunters and trappers of the white race. Small war parties constantly emerging from this vast extent of unexplored country would suddenly strike the border settlements, killing the men and carrying off into captivity the women and children. Companies of workmen on the railroads, at points hundreds of miles from each other, would be attacked on the same day, perhaps in the same hour. Overland mail coaches could not be run without military escort, and railroad and mail stations unguarded by soldiery were in perpetual danger. All safe transit across the plains had ceased. To go without soldiers was hazardous in the extreme; to go with them forbade reasonable hope of securing peaceful interviews with the enemy." Fortunately the Peace Commission contained within itself the most useful of assistants. General Sherman and Commissioner Taylor sent out word to the Indians through the military posts and Indian agencies, notifying the tribes that the Commissioners desired to confer with them near Fort Laramie in September and Fort Larned in October. The Fort Laramie conference bore no fruit during the summer of 1867. After inspecting conditions on the upper Missouri the Commissioners proceeded to Omaha in September and thence to North Platte station on the Union Pacific Railroad. Here they met Swift Bear of the Brulé Sioux and learned that the Sioux would not be ready to meet them until November. The Powder River War was still being fought by chiefs who could not be reached easily and whose delegations must be delayed. When the Commissioners returned to Fort Laramie in November, they found matters little better. Red Cloud, who was the recognized leader of the Oglala and Brulé Sioux and the hostile northern Cheyenne, refused even to see the envoys, and sent them word: "that his war against the whites was to save the valley of the Powder River, the only hunting ground left to his nation, from our intrusion. He assured us that whenever the military garrisons at Fort Philip Kearney and Fort C. F. Smith were withdrawn, the war on his part would cease." Regretfully, the Commissioners left Fort Laramie, having seen no savages except a few non-hostile Crows, and having summoned Red Cloud to meet them during the following summer, after asking "a truce or cessation of hostilities until the council could be held."