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Newspaper Page Text
THE INDIAN ADVOCATE 282 the Indians and were slaughtering the buffalo by thousands, in defiance of the government promises that such intrusion would be prevented. It was also charged that they directly incited disorder by selling whisky, arms, and ammunition to the Indians in rut urn for stolen stock. In his official report on the outbreak, General Pope states emphatically that the unlawful intrusion and criminal conduct of the white hunters were the principal cause of the war ( War, ). This is con firmed by the testimony of white men employed at the Chey enne agency at the time, who stated to the author that just before going out ihe Cheyenne chiefs rode down and assured them that they need have no fear, as the Indians considered them as friends and would not molest them, but were compel led to fight the buffalo hunters, who were destroying their means of subsistence. "Then they shook hands with us and rode off and began killing people." Shortly before this the son and nephew of Lone-wolf, the principal chief of the Kiowa, had been killed in Mexico. He went down with a party in the summer of 1874 and buried their bodies, making a solemn vow at the same time to kill a white man in retaliation, and thus communicating to his people the bitterness which he felt himself. Lone-wolf is described by Battey about this time as being several years older than Kicking-bird, not so far seeing, more hasty and rash in his conclusions, as well as more treacherous and cun ning, but with less depth of mind. He was the acknowledged leader of the war element in the tribe. While lawless white men were thus destroying the buffalo, the Indians themselves were suffering for food. The agent for the Cheyenne reports that for nearly four months prece ding the outbreak the rations had fallen short, and expresses the opinion that if there had beeu a full supply he could have held the tribe from the warpath. At the same time they were being systematically robbed of their stock by organized bands of horse thieves. The immediate cause of the outbreak by the Cheyenne in May, 1874, was the stealing by these men of