The remoteness of the scene, along with the obscurity of frontier records, have the effect of throwing them for us as far back into picturesque distance as our own border raids and Highland feuds ; we do not readily imagine the scalping of telegraph operators and school teachers, or expect the screech of the war-whoop to be found mingling with the whistle of the locomotive.
These risings, with their attendant atrocities, are matters of chronicle and legend, best known to us, on this side of the Atlantic, through the school of fiction to which they have lent their thrilling incidents.  The remoteness of the scene, along with the obscurity of frontier records, have the effect of throwing them for us as far back into picturesque distance as our own border raids and Highland feuds ; we do not readily imagine the scalping of telegraph operators and school teachers, or expect the screech of the war-whoop to be found mingling with the whistle of the locomotive.  Few of us remember that one of the most sanguinary of Indian outbreaks took place not a generation ago, at a time, indeed, when our attention to American affairs was absorbed by a far more momentous struggle.