as
their medicine-man practices. However, they concluded to put the matter
to a test.

So it was that two principal Indians, about one hundred miles apart,
agreed to send a message over the lines on a given day, and then they
would travel toward each other as fast as they could to see if the
message (known only to themselves and the operator) should be correct.
Of course it proved as we would expect, and they were satisfied. This
intelligence has spread from one tribe to another, and they, believing
that it is somehow (as it is in truth) connected with the Great Spirit
who controls the winds and the storms; hence they do not meddle with
it.

PLUM CREEK MASSACRE.

But it is not to be supposed that the Indians quietly submitted to the
building of the railroad through their country.

The most formidable obstacle which was met with in building the road
occurred in 1866, by the throwing off the track a train of cars at Plum
Creek, near the Platte River, two hundred and thirty miles west of
Omaha.

The Indians were led on by a half-breed, and probably one or more
scalawag whites were engaged in this diabolical act, as one was found
among the killed with his face painted black and wearing Indian
clothing. Some one having a fertile imagination made a picture of this
scene, and I saw it copied in Philadelphia for some wall-paper to
ornament hotel dining-rooms. Speaking to some ladies there about the
delightful trip to California over the Pacific Railroad, one exclaimed,
"I would like to visit California, but oh, my! I never could venture on
the danger. Just look at the picture in the window, corner Chestnut
Street and Broad. The horrid Indians have thrown the cars off the
track, and killing all the passengers!" I explained to her that it was
a fancy sketch entirely, gotten up for a bar-room wall-paper, and that
it was ridiculous and false; for the picture was made to show the
locomotive off the rail, and the Indians riding round the cars in white
shirt sleeves and bright-red, flaring neckties, like gay cavaliers or
brigands!

PAWNEE INDIANS--YELLOW SUN AND BLUE HAWK.

Both these Indians declare themselves innocent of the crime of murder.
I visited Omaha in the fall of 1869, where they were lodged in jail
awaiting their trial. Just before I came one of them had escaped, and
gone back to the Pawnee reservation, near Columbus. Here the sheriff
and soldiers found him with his squaw, decked out in all their