the emigrants with destruction, and actually fired upon one or two
parties of whites. A military force and military law are urgently called
for in that perilous region; and unless troops are speedily stationed at
Fort Laramie, or elsewhere in the neighborhood, both the emigrants and
other travelers will be exposed to most imminent risks.

The Ogallalla, the Brules, and other western bands of the Dakota, are
thorough savages, unchanged by any contact with civilization. Not one
of them can speak a European tongue, or has ever visited an American
settlement. Until within a year or two, when the emigrants began to
pass through their country on the way to Oregon, they had seen no whites
except the handful employed about the Fur Company's posts. They esteemed
them a wise people, inferior only to themselves, living in leather
lodges, like their own, and subsisting on buffalo. But when the swarm
of MENEASKA, with their oxen and wagons, began to invade them, their
astonishment was unbounded. They could scarcely believe that the earth
contained such a multitude of white men. Their wonder is now giving way
to indignation; and the result, unless vigilantly guarded against, may
be lamentable in the extreme.

But to glance at the interior of a lodge. Shaw and I used often to
visit them. Indeed, we spent most of our evenings in the Indian village;
Shaw's assumption of the medical character giving us a fair pretext. As
a sample of the rest I will describe one of these visits. The sun had
just set, and the horses were driven into the corral. The Prairie Cock,
a noted beau, came in at the gate with a bevy of young girls, with whom
he began to dance in the area, leading them round and round in a circle,
while he jerked up from his chest a succession of monotonous sounds, to
which they kept time in a rueful chant. Outside the gate boys and young
men were idly frolicking; and close by, looking grimly upon them, stood