staples, which Uncle Sam's commissary officer issued to them.

In the absence of other amusement, the officers' wives walked
over to witness this rather solemn ceremony. At least, the
serious expression on the faces of the Indians, as they received
their rations, gave an air of solemnity to the proceeding.

Large stakes were driven into the ground; at each stake, sat or
stood the leader of a band; a sort of father to his people; then
the rest of them stretched out in several long lines, young bucks
and old ones, squaws and pappooses, the families together, about
seventeen hundred souls in all. I used to walk up and down
between the lines, with the other women, and the squaws looked at
our clothes and chuckled, and made some of their inarticulate
remarks to each other. The bucks looked admiringly at the white
women, especially at the cavalry beauty, Mrs. Montgomery,
although I thought that Chief Diablo cast a special eye at our
young Mrs. Bailey, of the infantry.

Diablo was a handsome fellow. I was especially impressed by his
extraordinary good looks.

This tribe was quiet at that time, only a few renegades escaping
into the hills on their wild adventures: but I never felt any
confidence in them and was, on the whole, rather afraid of them.
The squaws were shy, and seldom came near the officers'
quarters. Some of the younger girls were extremely pretty; they
had delicate hands, and small feet encased in well-shaped
moccasins. They wore short skirts made of stripped bark, which
hung gracefully about their bare knees and supple limbs, and