ling each other, the red men saw
themselves free to strike, and clean the buffalo country.

So the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Kiowas and many of the Arapahos arose,
to close the wagon trails, plunder the stage stations, drive out the
settlers, and save the buffalo.

The result was the great Indian war of 1864. The Government hastily
sent what troops it could--mainly Volunteer cavalry and infantry,
assigned to fight the Western Indians instead of the Southern soldiers.
Thus two wars were being waged at once.

The white Americans had extended their towns and ranches clear across
the continent. Through Kansas and Nebraska there were ranches
scattered clear to the Colorado mountains. Denver was growing into a
city. Beyond the mountains the Mormons had built another city at the
Great Salt Lake. The Overland Stage was making daily trips over the
trail between the Missouri River and California. Another well-traveled
stage and emigrant trail ran from the Missouri River through central
Kansas, south of the Overland Trail, to Denver. And the freight wagons
for New Mexico plied between Leavenworth and Kansas City, and Santa Fe,
over the old Santa Fe Trail.

There were yet no railroads across the plains. But the Union Pacific
of the Government's Pacific Railway was surveyed out of Omaha, for Salt
Lake City and beyond; and its Kansas Division, known as the Kansas
Pacific, was starting up the Kansas River, for Denver. To protect the
wagon route through Kansas, and the advance of the railroad (which was
following the stage road), the Government located a line of military
posts; the same as upon the Overland Trail farther north, in Nebraska
and westward.

The first was Fort Riley, just outside of Junction City, where the
Republican River joined the Kansas River. Beyond, there was Salina;
and Ellsworth on the Smoky Hill River; and southward, to guard the
Santa Fe Trail over which huge quantities of Government supplies for
the Southwest were being hauled, there were Camp Zarah at Walnut Creek
of the Arkansas River, Fort Larned up the Arkansas, and so forth.

Many of the posts were only camps or cantonments, and received their
fort name later.

In November, 1864, Captain Henry Booth started from Fort Riley to
inspect the posts south to the Arkansas River in Colorado. Lieutenant
Hallowell was his companion. They had planned to travel comfortably in
Lieutenant Hallowell's light spring wagon instead of in a heavy
jouncing