which took up so much of their time, and was so obnoxious to the unfortunate whites whose tents were nearest.
In going home across the mountains to the Wind River the Crows took one of their number who had been badly wounded in the thigh. Why he insisted upon going back to his own home I do not know; perhaps the sufferer really did not know himself, but disliked being separated from his comrades. A splint was adjusted to the fractured limb, and the patient was seated upon an easy cushion instead of a saddle. Everything went well until after crossing the Big Horn Mountains, when the party ran in upon a band of Sioux raiders or spies in strong force. The Crows were hailed by some of the Sioux, but managed to answer a few words in that language, and then struck out as fast as ponies would carry them to get beyond reach of their enemies. They were afraid of leaving a trail, and for that reason followed along the current of all the mountain streams, swollen at that season by rains and melting snows, fretting into foam against impeding boulders and crossed and recrossed by interlacing branches of fallen timber. Through and over or under, as the case might be, the frightened Crows made their way, indifferent to the agony of the wounded companion, for whose safety only they cared, but to whose moans they were utterly irresponsive. This story we learned upon the return of the Shoshones.
To be obliged to await the train with supplies was a serious annoyance, but nothing better could be done. We had ceded to the Sioux by the treaty of 1867 all the country from the Missouri to the Big Horn, destroying the posts which had afforded protection to the overland route into Montana, and were now feeling the loss of just such depots of supply as those posts would have been. It was patent to every one that not hundreds, as had been reported, but thousands of Sioux and Cheyennes were in hostility and absent from the agencies, and that, if the war was to be prosecuted with vigor, some depots must be established at an eligible location like the head of Tongue River, old Fort Reno, or other point in that vicinity; another in the Black Hills; and still another at some favorable point on the Yellowstone, preferably the mouth of Tongue River. Such, at least, was the recommendation made by General Crook, and posts at or near all the sites indicated were in time established and are still maintained. The merits of Tongue River and its tributaries as
