The first conquerors, impelled by religious fanaticism and an unextinguishable thirst for gold were, we allow, pitiless to their unhappy victims, and sacrificed immense numbers in working the mines. Still, to be just, we must state that they never organized those grand Indian hunts which the Anglo-Saxons initiated in North America; they never offered a reward of fifty dollars for every Indian scalp; and instead of driving back the Indian race before them, they, on the contrary, blended the native blood with their own, so that the number of Indians has been considerably augmented in the old Spanish possessions, while they will ere long disappear in North America, where they are hunted down like wild beasts. According to a census made by the Washington Congress in 1858, the Indians scattered over the territory of the United States amount to 800,000. In Mexico, where the population is only seven million, there are five million Indians and half-breeds; moreover, it is proved that in the time of Motecuhzoma the population never attained this high figure. It results then from our remarks that the Spaniards who, during three centuries, incessantly massacred the Indians, succeeded in increasing their numbers; while the North Americans who are so philosophical and such philanthropists have attained a diametrically opposite result, and during the sixty years since they proclaimed their independence, in spite of all the efforts made to civilize the Indians, they have nearly exterminated those tribes which dwell on their territory. It must be confessed that this is a most unfortunate result! We will stop here, for every thinking man will be enabled to draw the sole logical conclusion from our remarks without our dilating on them. About forty years before the period at which our story begins, two of the most important tribes of the Comanche nation suddenly quarrelled after an expedition they had made in common against the Apaches, the irreconcilable enemies of the Comanches, with whom they alone dare to dispute the supremacy on the great prairies of the Far West. This expedition had been completely successful: a winter village of the Apaches was surprised by night, the horses were carried off, and sixty scalps raised. The warriors returned to the gathering place of their nation, singing, dancing, and celebrating their exploits, as they are accustomed to do when, in an expedition of this nature, they have killed several of their enemies without any loss on their own side. This had been the case on the present occasion. The Apache warriors, aroused from deep sleep, had fallen like ripe corn beneath the tomahawks of the Comanches as they sought to escape from their burning lodges without thought of arming themselves.