good reasons they have recourse to lies and calumnies." An unpardonable offense, it appears, has been committed in the eyes of our civilized people by the Indians. They had repaired, to the number of 2,000, to the appointed. spot at the time fixed by the Government agent to receive
their annuities and presents. They waited several days for the commissioner to arrive and in the meantime they ran out of provisions. Then a Mormon wagon-train, on its way to the Territory of Utah, came peaceably by the Indiatl
camp. One of the party was dragging after him a lame
cow hardly able to walk. A famished savage, out of pity for his wife and children, and perhaps, also, from compassion for the suffering animal, killed the cow and offered the Mormon double value for it in a horse or a mule.
Such an act with such an offer under such circumstances passes for very honest, very fair and very polite, in a wild country. Still the Mormon refused the proffered exchange and went and filed a complaint with the commandant of Fort Laramie, which is in the neighborhood. Like the wolf who leaped upon the lamb to devour it, crying: " I know very well that you all hate me, and you shall pay for the rest," the illustrious commandant straightway sent out a young officer with twenty soldiers armed to the teeth and
with a cannon loaded with grapeshot. He was absolutely determined to capture the so-called robber and make an example of him. The savages were astonished at the menacing turn that the affair of the cow, so frivolously begun, had taken; they begged the officer to take one, two, three horses in exchange, a hundred times the value of the cow, if necessary. They wished at any price to " bury " the affair, as they express it; that is to arrange it peaceably and quietly, but without giving up to him their brother, innocent
according to their code. The officer was inflexible, refused all offers; he must absolutely have his prisoner; and when the latter did not appear, he fired his cannon into the midst of the savages. The head chief, whom I knew well, the noblest heart of his nation, fell mortally wounded and a