Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68.King, Charles
General
Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68.
King, Charles
Dakota Indians -- Wars -- Fiction; Western stories
Indians there certainly were in other sections, and they were
unquestionably "raising the devil" along the Smoky Hill and the Southern
Plains, and there the Interior Department insisted that troops in strong
force should be sent. So, too, along the line of the Union Pacific.
Officials were still nervous. Troops of cavalry camped at intervals of
forty miles along the line between Kearney and Julesburg, and even
beyond. At Washington and the great cities of the East, therefore, there
was no anxiety as to the possible fate of those little garrisons, with
their helpless charge of women and children away up in the heart of the
Sioux country. But at Laramie and Frayne and Emory, the nearest frontier
posts; at Cheyenne, Omaha and Gate City the anxiety was great. When John
Folsom said the Indians meant a war of extermination people west of the
Missouri said: "Withdraw those garrisons while there is yet time or else
send five thousand troops to help them." But people east of the Missouri
said: "Who the devil is John Folsom? What does he know about it? Here's
what the Indian agents say, and that's enough," and people east of the
Missouri being vastly in the majority, neither were the garrisons
relieved nor the reinforcements sent. What was worse, John Folsom's
urgent advice that they discontinue at once all work at Warrior Gap and
send the troops and laborers back to Reno was pooh-poohed.
"The contracts have been let and signed. The material is all on its way.
We can't hack out now," said the officials. "Send runners to Red Cloud
and get him in for a talk. Promise him lots of presents. Yes, if he must
have them, tell him he shall have breech-loaders and copper cartridges,
like the soldiers--to shoot buffalo with, of course. Promise him pretty
much anything to be good and keep his hands off a little longer till we
get that fort and the new agency buildings finished, and then let him do
what he likes."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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