Indian Depredations--The model Mail Contractor--Rifles and Revolvers--Importance of a Scalp--Indian Chief reconnoitering--Saving dead Bodies--Death of a Warrior--The Charge--A proud Trophy. Sunset on the Prairie--Animal Life--A solitary Hunt--The Buffalo Chase--Desperate Encounter with an Indian--Ingenious Signal--Returning to Camp--Minute Guns--A welcome Return.
Previous to the year 1850 there was no regular mail service between the valley of the Mississippi and New Mexico and Utah Territories. In selling lands to settlers and taking these communities under the protecting care of the nation, the Government was bound in good faith to give them a regular mail. This, like all other mail service, is carried on without much regard to the question whether the actual receipts from the locality will be remunerative or not.
The commencement of this service in 1850, called out the energies of some of our most daring and enterprising business men. A tract of country nearly one thousand miles in extent had to be traversed, where there were no civilized inhabitants, and but one or two military posts.
The Indian tribes, finding their game disappear before the unerring rifle of the white hunter, and learning the taste of the luxuries of civilized life without the industry to procure them, became at first sullen and despairing, then hostile and revengeful. A detailed account of the "hair breadth 'scapes," the dangers, losses, and tragedies in encounters with hostile Indians, in transporting the United States mails across these plains, would form one of the most remarkable chapters in the postal history of the world.
One mail contractor on the route from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fé, by his success in transporting the mails safely, and his daring and diplomacy with the Indians, has become eminent among his countrymen, and dreaded by the hostile tribes whom he has encountered. The treachery so fatally prevalent in meetings between small bands of whites and these dark sons of the forest, and the cunning and boldness displayed in stealing the horses and cattle that belong to the "pale faces," have made it necessary that great caution should be used, and also that the Indians should be made to feel the force of that terrible weapon the modern rifle. The Indian has long since learned the superiority that the possession of "revolvers" gives to the white hunters. And he has also learned at what distance it is safe for him to approach the camp or the traveling party of his foes. They do not consider that there is much security in any distance less than three hundred yards, when well mounted and in rapid motion.