Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1889-11-07

80 eagerly sought for, and a mighty
rush of immi grafton Immediately after
the close of our civil war in
vaded it's inviting prairies. valleys
and wooded interveles, forever ended,
by his military genius, that muir
derous and savage warfare of the allied
Indian tribes in their attempted, and some-
times locally successful, raids upon the
sparse and widely separated settlements
in the young but promising State.
Fresh from hundred battlefelds of the
great rebellion, on fevery one of which
he was the laurel-crowned victor,
without availing himself of that rest to
which he was SO eminently entitled, he
at once, upon taking command of the
military division of the Missouri, with
headquarters at Fort Leavenworth-for
which specific purpose he had been as
signed at his own rfquest-inaugurated
the memorable winter campaign against
the hostile tribes which resulted in that
ever since unbroken white winged peace
and made possible the empire that has
been evolved in the great central State.
In the beautiful and heavily -timbered
valley of the Saline-a favorite rendezvous
of the Kiowas, Cheyennes and Arapa-'
hoes-a region teeming with game of all
kinds, from the bronzed wild turkey to the
ponderous but swift-footed elk (well
known among all the tribes, nearly as
it's Indian nomenclature can be literally
translated, ''the hunters paradse"), there
came in the spring OF 1858 more than fifty
men, most of them old sold ers. with their
wives and little ones, who stepped eau
tiously and hesitatingly into the peculiarly
inviting but relatively unknown territory,
to open for themselves farms in the '.new
wilderness." In their establishment thew
were necessarily widely separated; homes
were frequently. ten or more miles distant
from each other; but rude log bins were
quickly erected few acres of the stub
born sod subord1nated to the plow, and
crop planted, but which these honest and
hard-working settlers were destined never
to reap.
The Indians, suilen and watchful, but in
no wise demon strative just then, hung
around the creeks and little valleys not
many miles remote; but they were jealous
and watchful, because of this invasion of
their favorite hunting ground, only wait
ing for their opportunity when the obliv-
ious homesteaders, lglled into sense of
security, through g series of months of
repose, should become careless or indffer-
ent to the condition of their environment
in its relation to the status of the willy
nomads.
At last the supren5 & orsaeae aar.1vst. fo.--
which the savages had been SO patiently
waiting! 1t was an indescribably charm
ing morning. Sunday morning in Octo.
Der, that glorious month of Kansas in
comparable Indian summer. The golden
mist hung in light clouds over the series of
rocky hills which so picturesquely follow
the sinuosities of the Saline; the foliage
of the dense belt of trees on the rivers
margin had already turned deep russell,
the effects of the first frosts, and the in
volvement of wild grape vines exposed
the clusters of their purple fruit to the
% y
sumac berries, intensely red, bordered the
edge of the timber for miles.
A few punches of antelope were rumi-
mating on the sunny slopes of the hills,
and scattering herds of buffalo could be
seen quietly grazing in the distance. Here
and there. though at great intervals, a
thin wreath of smoke curIe gracefully
upward from the isolated cabins of the
unsuspecting dwellers of the beautiful
valley, and over all nature
1.-THE breezy and pure inspirations of morn
Breathed about
Suddenly, like the rushing of mighty
wings, with one accord and simultaneous
ly inspired by the genius of that demon
Satanta, the chief of the Kiowas, a
band of warrors, Observation-Disclosures and
paint-bedaubed, rushed into the peaceful
and defenseless little settlement, bearing
the torch and the scalping knife, giving
women and children alike as they reveled
in their horrible saturnalia of blood!
It was the work of but a few moments;
q CHASTITY corpse here and little mound
of ashes there were all that was left to tell
how complete had been the well-conceiyed
massacre.
A few however, escaped, and these
fastened under the friendly shelter of the
darkness that night, having hidden during
Il
which bordered it, to the military post of
Fort HaIker. where now the town of
Kanopolis, in Ellsworth County, is located.
Ali along the line, as it were, of the
savage's deep laid plot, from various
points where settlements had sprung up,
men, women and children who had
escaped the keen edge of the scalping-
knife or that captivity to woman more
horrid than thousand deaths, came into
Harker, where temporarily they We're
tented, fed, and the wounded cared for un-
til it was safe for them to venture an oc-
cupancy of their abandoned claims again.
The toesin of a prolonged and revengeful
war had thus been sounded by this diabol-
Ical overt act of the formidable PLAINS
tribes, who now entered into an alliance
offensive and defensive, their runners
being kept constantly on the move betw cen
the several hostile camps, inviting the
y 60 QoedS Oi ueillSu caring,
inspired by messages from the leading
war chiefs. Freiahsers on the Old Santa
Fe and Oregon trails were attacked
daily, AMI the overland coaches carry
ing the United States mail were frequent-
ly raided by rowing ban1s of the Kiowas,
Arapahoes and s'dog soldiers" of the
Cheyennes, who had now, in all their saw
age hatred of the whites, determined
upon an EXTERN ion of the race
General Sheridan, imm ediately after the
massacre en- the Spillman AMI tributary
creeks, accompanied by his personal aids,
the two Ge nerals Forsyth, moved from the
comfortable and elegantly apo nted post
o. Fort Leavenworth to he extensive but
primitive one of Fort Harker, where he
es abliShed his he sdquarsers in tents and
accommodated himself to all the hard
ships and inconveniences of camp life
again.
Here he gave orders for the cree ion at
once Of two block houses in the region