e care of his home; it was adorned with the most beautifully
dressed buffalo robes and the finest furs, while the floor was covered
with matting.

It seems that Kicking Bird, after visiting Mr. Wykes that morning, went
immediately to his lodge, and sat down to eat something, but just as he
had finished a cup of coffee, he fell over, dead. He had in his service
a Mexican woman, and she had been bribed to poison him.

An expensive coffin was made at the agency for his remains, fashioned
out of the finest black walnut to be found in the country where that
timber grows to such a luxuriant extent. It was eight feet long and four
feet deep, but even then it did not hold one-half of his effects, which
were, according to the savage custom, interred with his body.

The cries and lamentations of the warriors and women of his band were
heartrending; such a manifestation of grief was never before witnessed
at the agency. A handsome fence was erected around his grave, in the
cemetery at Fort Sill, and the government ordered a beautiful marble
monument to be raised over it; but I do not know whether it was ever
done.

Kicking Bird was only forty years old at the time of his sudden taking
off, and was very wealthy for an Indian. He knew the uses of money and
was a careful saver of it. A great roll of greenbacks was placed in his
coffin, and that fact having leaked out, it was rumoured that his grave
was robbed; but the story may not have been true.

One of the greatest terrors of the Old Santa Fe Trail was the half-breed
Indian desperado Charles Bent. His mother was a Cheyenne squaw, and his
father the famous trader, Colonel Bent. He was born at the base of
the Rocky Mountains, and at a very early age placed in one of the best
schools that St. Louis afforded. His venerable sire, with only a limited
education himself, was determined that his boy should profit by the
culture and refinement of civilization, so he was not allowed to return
to his mountain home at Bent's Fort, and the savage conditions under
which he was born, until he had attained his majority. He then spoke no
language but English. His mother died while he was absent at school, and
his father continued to live at the old fort, where Charles, after he
had reached the age of twenty-one, joined him.

Some Washington sentimentalist, philosophizing on the Indian character,
his knowledge being based on Cooper's novels probably, has said:
"Civilization has very marked eff