emigration to it through their hunting-gronnds, 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 erossed 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 con- stant 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 fully represented; but there were present only two chiefs of the Cheyennes- Black Kettle and White Antelope. (White Autelope was ono of tho chiefs brutally murdered five years later in the Chivington massacre in Colorado.) As it impossible for the rest of the Cheyennes to reach the Fort in less than twenty davs, and the commissioner conld not wait long, Black Kettle and White Antelope wished it to be dis- tinetly understood that they pledged only themselves and their were prominent was so 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 They expressed great pleasure on learning that their Great Fa ther bad heard of their good conduet, and requested in return, that they intended in every respect to conform to the were almost in the midst of the hostile tribes, Ime to say, wishes of the Government. I then presented to them u dia gram of the country assigned them, by their treaty of 1851, as their hunting-grounds, which they seemed to understand per feetly, and were enabled without diffieulty 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 then. I stated to them that it was the intention of their Great Father to redunce the area of their present reserva