Colonel Boone was made Indian Agent, but President Lincoln told Colonel Boone that he could not furnish him very many soldiers as escort on account of the war. Mr. Boone told him he did not want an army, but that he did want about three ambulances and the privilege of selecting his own men to go with him. Arrangements were then made to forward to Fort Lyon blankets, beads, Indian trinkets, flour, sugar, coffee and such other articles of usefulness as is generally found in settlement stores or commissaries. When Colonel Boone told President Lincoln that he did not care for an army of soldiers for escort, the President seemed astonished, and asked him how he dared go down the Arkansas River without a good escort. Boone told him that it was his idea that he would be safer with three men, the ones he selected to go with him, viz.: Tom Boggs, Colonel Saint Vraine, Major Filmore and Colonel Bent than he would be with a thousand soldiers. The first thing Boone did was to send out runners to have the Indians come in to Big Timbers, on the Arkansas River, where Fort Lyon is now located. There Colonel Boone began his negotiations with the Indians that opened up the Santa Fe Trail to such an extent that traveling was less dangerous and expensive. In the second place, Colonel Boone and his party proceeded to Fort Lyon and at once began negotiations with the Indians as per his contract with the Indian Commissioners and President Abraham Lincoln. When they arrived at the place appointed where the agency was to be established, there were camped about thirty thousand Indians with their Indian provisions, buffalo meat, venison, antelope, bear and other wild meats, and John Smith and Dick Curtis, who were the great Indian interpreters for all the tribes. The Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, Sioux, Arapahoes, Acaddas, and other tribes, with Colonel Boone, arrived at a complete understanding, and for about two years the Indians were kindly disposed toward the Whites, or as long as Colonel Boone's administration as Indian Agent existed. Any one then could cross the plains without fear of molestation from the Indians. CHAPTER VII. Colonel Boone Acquires Squire Wright's Enmity. In 1861, however, Judge Wright of Indiana, a member of Congress during Boone's administration as Indian Agent, brought his dissipated son to Colonel Boone's. Colonel Boone told the Congressman to leave him with him and he could clerk in the Government store and issue the Indian annuities. This boy soon became a very efficient clerk, quit his drinking, and under Colonel Boone's persuasion, developed into an honorable and upright citizen of the United States.