ous pasturage of the buffalo.

None of the various bands had the temerity to attempt its permanent
occupancy; for whenever hostile tribes met there, which was of frequent
occurrence, in their annual hunt for their winter's supply of meat, a
bloody battle was certain to ensue. The region referred to has been the
scene of more sanguinary conflicts between the different Indians of the
plains, perhaps, than any other portion of the continent. Particularly
was it the arena of war to the death, when the Pawnees met their
hereditary enemies, the Cheyennes.

Pawnee Rock was a spot well calculated by nature to form, as it has
done, an important rendezvous and ambuscade for the prowling savages of
the prairies, and often afforded them, especially the once powerful and
murderous Pawnees whose name it perpetuates, a pleasant little retreat
or eyrie from which to watch the passing Santa Fe traders, and dash down
upon them like hawks, to carry off their plunder and their scalps.

Through this once dangerous region, close to the silent Arkansas, and
running under the very shadow of the rock, the Old Trail wound its
course. Now, at this point, it is the actual road-bed of the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, so strangely are the past and present
transcontinental highways connected here.

Who, among bearded and grizzled old fellows like myself, has forgotten
that most sensational of all the miserably executed illustrations in
the geographies of fifty years ago, "The Santa Fe Traders attacked by
Indians"? The picture located the scene of the fight at Pawnee Rock,
which formed a sort of nondescript shadow in the background of a crudely
drawn representation of the dangers of the Trail.

If this once giant sentinel[61] of the plains might speak, what a story
it could tell of the events that have happened on the beautiful prairie
stretching out for miles at its feet!

In the early fall, when the rock was wrapped in the soft amber haze
which is a distinguishing characteristic of the incomparable Indian
summer on the plains; or in the spring, when the mirage weaves its
mysterious shapes, it loomed up in the landscape as if it were a huge
mountain, and to the inexperienced eye appeared as if it were the abrupt
ending of a well-defined range. But when the frost came, and the mists
were dispelled; when the thin fringe of timber on the Walnut, a few
miles distant, had doffed its emerald mantle, and the grass had grown
yellow and rust