important part in the Spanish-American war. He was the first to move from the west; first at Camp Thomas Chickamauga Park, Ga.; first in the jungle of Cuba; among the first killed in battle; first in the block-house at El Caney, and nearest to the enemy when he surrendered.

Frank W. Pullen, Jr.,

Ex-Sergeant-Major 25th U.S. Infantry.
Enfield, N.C., March 23, 1899.

BUFFALO TROOPERS, THE NAME BY WHICH NEGRO SOLDIERS ARE KNOWN.

They Comprise Several of the Crack Regiments in Our Army-The Indians Stand in Abject Terror of them-Their Awful Yells Won a Battle with the Redskins.

"It is not necessary to revert to the Civil war to prove that American Negroes are faithful, devoted wearers of uniforms," says a Washington man, who has seen service in both the army and the navy. "There are at the present time four regiments of Negro soldiers in the regular army of the United States-two outfits of cavalry and two of infantry. All four of these regiments have been under fire in important Indian campaigns, and there is yet to be recorded a single instance of a man in any of the four layouts showing the white feather, and the two cavalry regiments of Negroes have, on several occasions, found themselves in very serious situations. While the fact is well known out on the frontier, I don't remember ever having seen it mentioned back here that an American Indian has a deadly fear of an American Negro. The most utterly reckless, dare-devil savage of the copper hue stands literally in awe of a Negro, and the blacker the Negro the more the Indian quails. I can't understand why this should be, for the Indians decline to give their reasons for fearing the black men, but the fact remains that even a very bad Indian will give the mildest-mannered Negro imaginable all the room he wants, and to spare, as any old regular army soldier who has frontiered will tell you. The Indians, I fancy, attribute uncanny and eerie qualities to the blacks."

"The cavalry troop to which I belonged soldiered alongside a couple of troops of the 9th Cavalry, a black regiment, up in the Sioux country eight or nine years ago. We were performing chain guard, hemming-in duty, and it was our chief business to prevent the savages from straying from the reservation. We weren't under instructions to riddle them if they attempted to pass our guard posts, but were authorized to tickle them up to any reasonable extent, short of maiming them, with our bayonets, if any of them attempted to bluff past us. Well, the men of my troop had all colors of trouble while on guard in holding the savages in. The Ogalallas would hardly pay any attention to the white sentries of the chain guard, and when they wanted to pass beyond the guard limits they would invariably pick out a spot for passage that was patrolled by a white 'post-humper.' But the guards of the two black troops didn't have a single run-in with the savages. The Indians made it a point to remain strictly away from the Negro soldiers' guard posts. Moreover, the black soldiers got ten times as much obedience from the Indians loafing around the tepees and wickleups as did we of the white outfit. The Indians would fairly jump to obey the uniformed Negroes. I remember seeing a black sergeant make a minor chief go down to a creek to get a pail of water--an unheard of thing, for the chiefs, and even the ordinary bucks among the Sioux, always make their squaws perform this sort of work. This chief was sunning himself, reclining, beside his tepee, when his squaw started with the bucket for the creek some distance away. The Negro sergeant saw the move. He walked up to the lazy, grunting savage."

"'Look a-yeah, yo' spraddle-nosed, yalluh voodoo nigguh,' said the black sergeant--he was as black as a stovepipe--to the blinking chief, 'jes' shake yo' no-count bones an' tote dat wattuh yo'se'f. Yo' ain' no bettuh to pack wattuh dan Ah am, yo' heah me.'"

"The heap-much Indian chief didn't understand a word of what the Negro sergeant said to him, but he understands pantomime all right, and when the black man in uniform grabbed the pail out of the squaw's hand and thrust it into the dirty paw of the chief the chief went after that bucket of water, and he went a-loping, too."

[Illustration. George E. Powell]

"The Sioux will hand down to their children's children the story of a charge that a couple of Negro cavalry troops made during the Pine Ridge troubles. It was of the height of the fracas, and the bad Indians were regularly lined up for battle. Those two black troops were ordered to make the initial swoop upon them. You know the noise one black man can make when he gets right down to the business of yelling. Well, these two troops of blacks started their terrific whoop in unison when they were a mile away from the waiting Sioux, and they got warmed up and in better practice with every jump their horses made. I give you my solemn word that in the ears of us of the white outfit, stationed three miles away, the yelps those two Negro troops of cavalry gave sounded like the carnival whooping of ten thousand devils. The Sioux weren't scared a little bit by the approaching clouds of alkali dust, but, all the same, when the two black troops were more than a quarter of a mile away the Indians broke and ran as if the old boy himself were after them, and it was then an easy matter to round them up and disarm them. The chiefs afterward confessed that they were scared out by the awful howling of the black soldiers."

"Ever since the war the United States navy has had a fair representation of Negro bluejackets, and they make first-class naval tars. There is not a ship in the navy to-day that hasn't from six to a dozen, anyhow, of Negroes on its muster rolls. The Negro sailors' names very rarely get enrolled on the bad conduct lists. They are obedient, sober men and good seamen. There are many petty officers among them."--The Planet.

THE CHARGE OF THE "NIGGER NINTH" ON SAN JUAN HILL.

BY GEORGE E. POWELL