take cover behind the wagons. That the Indians appear closer than Marcy indicates is due to the artist's lack of perspective. They are firing muzzle-loading rifles, several men being in the act of ramming home charges. Stieffel is doubtless correct in this detail. The Chief of Ordnance reported in October 1867 that nearly all the infantry in the Departments of the Missouri and the Platte had been issued breech-loaders.[25] It seems more than probable that Company K, in transit as it was from the distant Department of New Mexico, had never seen the new weapons.

In the matter of uniform, Stieffel may have been indulging his fancy somewhat when he pictured the men as wearing the long frock coat and black campaign hat. A miscellany of dress with the short fatigue jacket and kepi predominating would seem far more reasonable for an outfit which had just finished six rough years in the desert Southwest and was even then nearing the end of a 500-mile march. The artist, as did most observers of the period, has patently overestimated the number of Indians who must have carried firearms in the attack. Fully 50 percent or more of the Indians are pictured as so armed, a point which—understandable as it may be in the case of an observer participating in what may well have been his first Indian fight—is not borne out by the record. In the Fetterman Massacre of the previous December, of the 81 white men killed only six bore gunshot wounds,[26] and the best evidence indicates that the force which overwhelmed Custer on the Little Big Horn River in 1876 was at least 50 percent armed with bow and arrow.[27] Then again, General Marcy's report would seem to bear this out. Had the Indians been well armed, the freight wagon train, which Stieffel pictures corralled in the right background, could hardly have held out for twelve days against a force estimated at 300 or more warriors defended by only 25 men, at least a part of whom were Mexicans described by Marcy as badly frightened.[28] The soldier in the center background making a dash for the corralled wagons is probably a flanker cut off by the sudden attack, possibly the Lt. Williams who was wounded, since only officers in the infantry were mounted. The group of Indians around the fire (in the right centerground) cannot be accounted for.

Figure 7.—Fort Harker, Kansas; south side. (USNM 384186; Smithsonian photo 38986.)

Stieffel's two pictures of the meeting of the Government's peace commissioners with the Indians at the general tribal rendezvous on Big Medicine Lodge Creek in October 1867 (figs. 3, 4) are his most important from a historical standpoint, especially the one of Satanta, the Kiowa chief, addressing the meeting.[29]

Indian unrest during and immediately after the Civil War caused by the ever-increasing white migration to the West had grown to such proportions that in 1867 the Congress launched an all-out effort to establish a lasting peace on the frontier. The plan was to persuade the warring tribes to sign treaties whereby they would move onto reservations where they would be undisturbed by the whites and, in turn, would cease to molest the frontier settlements.[30] The Indians concerned with the Medicine Lodge treaty were the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe. This treaty is unusually important, as it changed the entire status of these tribes from that of independence with free and unrestricted range over the entire plains area to that of dependence on the Government with confinement to the limits of a reservation with constant civilian and military supervision. For the Indians it was the beginning of the end.

Figure 8.—Fort Keogh, Montana. (USNM 384189; Smithsonian photo 37925.)

Upon its arrival at Fort Harker following the action of September 23, Company K had been assigned as escort for the commissioners, thus Stieffel's presence at Council Grove. It was a colorful gathering, with some 5,000 Indians on hand. First came a series of speeches. Then the treaty was drawn up and explained to the Indians. They were to retire to assigned reservations, cease attacking the whites, and permit railroads to be built across the plains. In return the reservations were to be closed to the white buffalo hunters and the tribes were to be issued certain annuities and provided with farming implements, seeds, churches, and schools. In short, the Indians were to be forced to "walk the white man's road."

When the turn came for the Indians to reply, several chiefs responded, the most notable being the Kiowa chief, Satanta, or "White Bear" (fig. 11), one of the most remarkable individuals in his tribe's history. Speaking for all, Satanta made an unusually strong impression on most of those present, Stieffel among them, for this is the incident which he chose to depict[31] (fig. 3).

Satanta is pictured in the act of speaking to the commissioners, three of whom can be identified as the military members, Generals Terry, Augur, and Harney from left to right,[32] plus one of the civilian commissioners, possibly N. G. Taylor, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. A daring and successful warrior, Satanta's eloquence and vigor of expression had already won for