ng Bull. I still believe I could have got
safely through the country, though there were plenty of chances that I
would be killed or wounded in the attempt.

I returned to the Post, turned back my presents at a loss to myself,
and paid the interpreter fifty dollars for his day's work. He was very
glad to have the fifty and a whole skin, for he could not figure how
the five hundred would be of much help to him if he had been stretched
out on the Plains with an Indian bullet through him.

I was supplied with conveyance back to Mandan by Colonel Brown and took
my departure the next morning. Afterward, in Indianapolis, President
Harrison informed me that he had allowed himself to be persuaded
against my mission in opposition to his own judgment, and said he was
very sorry that he had not allowed me to proceed.

It developed afterward that the people who had moved the President to
interfere consisted of a party of philanthropists who advanced the
argument that my visit would precipitate a war in which Sitting Bull
would be killed, and it was to spare the life of this man that I was
stopped!

The result of the President's order was that the Ghost Dance War
followed very shortly, and with it came the death of Sitting Bull.

I found that General Miles knew exactly why I had been turned back from
my trip to Sitting Bull. But he was a soldier, and made no criticism of
the order of a superior. General Miles was glad to hear that I had been
made a brigadier-general, but he was still more pleased with the fact
that I knew so many Indians at the Agency.

"You can get around among them," he said, "and learn their intentions
better than any other man I know."

I remained with General Miles until the final surrender of the North
American Indians to the United States Government after three hundred
years of warfare.

This surrender was made to Miles, then lieutenant-general of the army,
and it was eminently fitting that a man who had so ably conducted the
fight of the white race against them and had dealt with them so justly
and honorably should have received their surrender.

With that event ended one of the most picturesque phases of Western
life--Indian fighting. It was with that that I was identified from my
youth to my middle age, and in the time I spent on the Plains, Indian
warfare reached its greatest severity and its highest development.

CHAPTER XIII

In the preceding chapters I have sketched briefly some of