settlers, but the country is so large, and the advantage of the
Indians so great, that we cannot make a single war and end it.
From the nature of things we must take chances and clean out
Indians as we encounter them."

Segregation of the Indian tribes upon reservations seemed to the
commission the only solution of the vexing problem. Various
treaties were made and others were projected looking toward the
removal of the tribesmen from the highways of continental travel.
The result was misgiving and increased unrest among the Indians.

In midsummer of 1868 forays occurred at many points along the
border of the Indian Territory. General Sheridan, who now
commanded the Department of the Missouri, believed that a general
war was imminent. He determined to teach the southern tribesmen a
lesson they would not forget. In the dead of winter our troops
marched against the Cheyennes, then in their encampments below
the Kansas line. The Indians did not believe that white men could
march in weather forty below zero, during which they themselves
sat in their tepees around their fires; but our cavalrymen did
march in such weather, and under conditions such as our cavalry
perhaps could not endure today. Among these troops was the
Seventh Cavalry, Custer's Regiment, formed after the Civil War,
and it was led by Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Custer himself,
that gallant officer whose name was to go into further and more
melancholy history of the Plains.

Custer marched until he got in touch with the trails of the
Cheyennes, whom he knew to belong to Black Kettle's band. He did
not at the time know that below them, in the same valley of the