tier volunteers captured some nine thousand prisoners.
The Indians withdrew into a wild canyon, where no white man, it was
said, had ever penetrated, and believed to be impregnable. But Kit
pursued them from either end, and attacked them with pure Indian
strategy and tactics; and the Navajos finding themselves thus
surrounded, and their supplies cut off, outwitted by a keener fighter
than themselves, surrendered at discretion. Then he did not slaughter
them, but marched them to a goodly reservation, and put them to work
herding and planting, and they had continued peaceable ever since.

"Kit seemed thoroughly familiar with Indian life and character, and
it must be conceded, that no American of his time knew our aborigines
better--if any so well. It must be set down to their credit, that he
was their stout friend--no Boston philanthropist more so. He did not
hesitate to say, that all our Indian troubles were caused originally by
bad white men, if the truth were known, and was terribly severe on the
brutalities and barbarities of the border. He said the Indians were very
different from what they used to be, and were yearly becoming more so
from contact with border ruffians and cowboys. He said he had lived for
years among them with only occasional visits to the settlements, and
he had never known an Indian to injure a Pale Face, where he did not
deserve it; on the other hand, he had seen an Indian kill his brother
even for insulting a white man in the old times. He insisted that
Indians never commit outrages unless they are first provoked to them by
the borderers, and that many of the peculiar and special atrocities
with which they are charged are only their imitation of the bad acts
of wicked white men. He pleaded for the Indians, as 'pore ignorant
critters, who had no learnin', and didn't know no better,' whom we were
daily robbing of their hunting grounds and homes, and solemnly asked:
'What der yer 'spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us,
thinks of these things?' He was particularly severe upon Col. Chivington
and the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, which was still fresh in the public
mind, said he; 'jist to think of that dog Chivington, and his dirty
hounds, up thar at Sand Creek! Whoever heerd of sich doings 'mong
Christians!'

"'The pore Indians had the Stars and Stripes flying over them, our old
flag thar, and they'd bin told down to Denver, that so long as they kept
that flying they'd be safe enough.