plundering at an early day, to prepare myself for the work evidently
ahead the first thing I did on assuming permanent command was to make
a trip to Fort Larned and Fort Dodge, near which places the bulk of
the Indians had congregated on Pawnee and Walnut creeks. I wanted to
get near enough to the camps to find out for myself the actual state
of feeling among the savages, and also to familiarize myself with the
characteristics of the Plains Indians, for my previous experience had
been mainly with mountain tribes on the Pacific coast. Fort Larned I
found too near the camps for my purpose, its proximity too readily
inviting unnecessary "talks," so I remained here but a day or two,
and then went on to Dodge, which, though considerably farther away
from the camps, was yet close enough to enable us to obtain easily
information of all that was going on.

It took but a few days at Dodge to discover that great discontent
existed about the Medicine Lodge concessions, to see that the young
men were chafing and turbulent, and that it would require much tact
and good management on the part of the Indian Bureau to persuade the
four tribes to go quietly to their reservations, under an agreement
which, when entered into, many of them protested had not been fully
understood.

A few hours after my arrival a delegation of prominent chiefs called
on me and proposed a council, where they might discuss their
grievances, and thus bring to the notice of the Government the
alleged wrongs done them; but this I refused, because Congress had
delegated to the Peace Commission the whole matter of treating with
them, and a council might lead only to additional complications. My
refusal left them without hope of securing better terms, or of even
delaying matters longer; so henceforth they were more than ever