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Partly through love of sport, partly in exercise of military duties, Major Campion found himself, for many months at a time, across the Mexican frontier, in the land of Indians and Buffaloes, an exile from all the comforts of civilization, leading a kind of wild life, suffering at times great deprivation, and incurring not a few dangers. Notwithstanding the unsettled state of affairs with many of the Indian tribes likely to be encountered en route, and contrary to the advice of friends, the author, one of a party of five, fully equipped and well mounted, set forth upon his journey.
From the starting-point a waggon trail led for about a hundred miles to Fort Riley ; thence a few days' travelling further west would bring the party to where Buffaloes were to be found. The route to Fort Riley lay through the land of the Poltowattomies, a partly civilized tribe, and then across a portion of the country claimed by the Pawnees. These latter were "wild," and though "treaty Indians," had a well-deserved reputation of being the most expert horse-thieves of the plains.
After leaving Fort Riley, the route lay through a region covered over by bands of Sioux, Cheyennes, and Kiowas — Indians nomin- ally at peace with the whites, but known to be disaffected; three tribes of evil repute, and no respecters of treaties when fortune offered a temporary advantage. Looking back to that trip with his acquired experience, the author wonders how he could have been hare-brained enough to have undertaken it, and how he contrived to return unharmed. He assuredly had many narrow escapes from death in various forms, and considering how fully occupied he must have been in protecting life and property, in tracking and hunting game whereon to subsist en route, and in taking active measures to prevent a surprise by the numerous parties of treacherous Indians encountered from time to time on
