If one tries to imagine himself in the conditions that then existed in southern Idaho, he will, perhaps, better understand why even humane people could have had stern and cruel opinions with regard to the treatment of some classes of Indians. There was no danger of attack upon settlements of any size; there was, in fact, no declared war. But stock was constantly being stolen, lone men murdered, and pack trains attacked. If a few men pursued the Indians, the latter would turn and fight like fiends, and with the advantage of knowledge of the country. To dwellers in secure homes, these enumerations may appear not particularly significant, but to one with understanding of frontier conditions they mean much. If travellers, for example, had their animals stolen, it meant all the discomfort and danger of being left afoot in a country of great distances. If a rancher had his stock run off, it meant temporary impoverishment and disablement. For white men to steal horses was quite generally recognized as a capital crime; why, then, compunction for Indians? Men, moreover, who looked down upon the mutilated remains of comrades, cut off in the unceasing assassinations, were very likely to vow vengeance upon the whole murderous race. Finally, there were wider considerations affecting the whole community; Indian attacks deterred packers, freighters, and stage owners, thereby raising freights, delaying mails, making supplies more scarce and costly, impeding immigration, and hindering the investment of capital,--in a word, checking prosperity in a way to which no civilized community would submit. The men who went out to find and to kill Indians who were thus damaging the communities, were not always nice men; but they often showed self-denial in leaving good-paying employments, and they endured great privations and did a necessary work for civilization.[14] The character of the United States troops, likewise, who served in these regions during the Civil War was sometimes questionable; but frontier communities were justifiably grateful to men like those of General Conner's command, many of whom in the Bear River expedition endured freezing, wounds, and death in corralling and fighting a large band of predatory Indians.[15]