With the exception
of a half-dozen military posts and a few stations on the two overland
emigrant routes--the Smoky Hill to Denver, and the Arkansas to New
Mexico--this country was an unsettled waste known only to the Indians
and a few trappers. There were neither roads nor well-marked trails,
and the only timber to be found--which generally grew only along the
streams--was so scraggy and worthless as hardly to deserve the name.
Nor was water by any means plentiful, even though the section is
traversed by important streams, the Republican, the Smoky Hill, the
Arkansas, the Cimarron, and the Canadian all flowing eastwardly, as
do also their tributaries in the main. These feeders are sometimes
long and crooked, but as a general thing the volume of water is
insignificant except after rain-falls. Then, because of unimpeded
drainage, the little streams fill up rapidly with torrents of water,
which quickly flows off or sinks into the sand, leaving only an
occasional pool without visible inlet or outlet.
At the period of which I write, in 1868, the Plains were covered with
vast herds of buffalo--the number has been estimated at 3,000,000
head--and with such means of subsistence as this everywhere at hand,
the 6,000 hostiles were wholly unhampered by any problem of
food-supply.
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