emigration to it through their hunting-grounds, which are no longer reliable as a certain source of food to them.”
It was estimated that during the summer of 1859 over sixty thousand emigrants crossed these plains in their central belt. The trains of vehicles and cattle were frequent and valuable in proportion; and post lines and private expresses were in constant motion.
In 1860 a commissioner was sent out to hold a council with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes at Bent’s Fort, on the Upper Arkansas, and make a treaty with them. The Arapahoes were fully represented; but there were present only two prominent chiefs of the Cheyennes—Black Kettle and White Antelope. (White Antelope was one of the chiefs brutally murdered five years later in the Chivington massacre in Colorado.) As it was impossible for the rest of the Cheyennes to reach the Fort in less than twenty days, and the commissioner could not wait so long, Black Kettle and White Antelope wished it to be distinctly understood that they pledged only themselves and their own bands.
The commissioner says: “I informed them as to the object of my visit, and gave them to understand that their Great Father had heard with delight of their peaceful disposition, although they were almost in the midst of the hostile tribes. They expressed great pleasure on learning that their Great Father had heard of their good conduct, and requested me to say, in return, that they intended in every respect to conform to the wishes of the Government. I then presented to them a diagram of the country assigned them, by their treaty of 1851, as their hunting-grounds, which they seemed to understand perfectly, and were enabled without difficulty to give each initial point. In fact, they exhibited a degree of intelligence seldom to be found among tribes where no effort has been made to civilize them. I stated to them that it was the intention of their Great Father to reduce the area of their present reserva-
