to shoot you on sight." Then hesitating an
instant, continued, "but I have changed my mind." "Perhaps," I replied,
"Mr. Meacham, it is fortunate for you or I that you have changed your
mind." He then went on to detail how I had abused him. I said, "Mr.
Meacham, before God, you are responsible for the death of Gen. Canby, a
noble man and soldier, and I don't know how many others." After
conversing some time we separated, never to meet again.

But to return to the war. On the 18th Gen. Gillem sent out Col. Thomas
and Major Wright on a scouting expedition in the lava region to discover
if possible the whereabouts of the savages. The scouting party numbered
sixty-two men, including Lieutenants Cranston, Harve, and Harris.
Instead of sending out experienced men, these men were sent to be
slaughtered, as the result demonstrated. Gillem was not only incompetent
personally, but was jealous of every man, citizen or regular, who was
competent. The party scouted around through the lava for a distance of
several miles. They saw no Indians or sign of Indians. The hostiles had
fled and were nowhere to be found. They sat down to eat their lunch.
They were quietly surrounded and at the first fire the soldiers, as is
almost always the case, became panic stricken. The officers bravely
strove to stem the tide of panic, but hopelessly. The panic became a
rout and the rout a massacre, and of the sixty-two men who were sent out
that morning but two were alive, and they were desperately wounded.

Had any one of the old experienced officers, like Green, Mason, Perry,
Bernard or Hasbrook been sent on this duty a massacre would have been
impossible. They would never have been caught off their guard and the
sickening massacre would have been averted. The very fact of no Indians
in sight would have taught these men caution.

The entire command of Gen. Gillem now became demoralized, and desertions
were by the wholesale. Gen. Gillem fortified his camp at the foot of the
bluff, and surrounded it with a rock wall. His communications were cut
off and his trains captured and destroyed. "Gillem's Camp" was a fort as
well as a "graveyard." Trains of wagons were captured, the wagons burned
and the animals taken away. The Indians daily fired on his picket line.

Such was the deplorable conditions of affairs when Gen. Jeff C. Davis
assumed command. Davis was eminently fitted for the task assigned him.
He at once restored confidence among the disheartened a