War-Path and Bivouac, Or the Conquest of the Sioux

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John F. Finerty. War-Path and Bivouac, Or the Conquest of the Sioux

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WAR-PATH AND BIVOUAC,

The Conquest of the Sioux,

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WAR-PATH AND BIVOUAC

ditions, under Generals Sully, Connors, Stanley and Custer —all of which were partially unsuccessful—had attracted the attention of the country to the great region already specified. The beauty and variety of the landscape, the immense quantities of the noblest species of American game; the serrated mountains, and forest-covered hills; the fine grazing lands and rushing streams, born of the snows of the majestic Big Horn peaks; and, above all else, the rumor of great gold deposits, the dream of wealth which hurled Cortez on Mexico and Pizarro on Peru, fired the Caucasian heart with the spirit of adventure and exploration, to which the attendant and well-recognized danger lent an additional zest. The expedition of General Custer, which entered the Black Hills proper—those of Dakota—in 1874, confirmed the reports of "gold finds," and, thereafter, a wall of fire, not to mention a wall of Indians, could not stop the encroachments of that terrible white race before which all other races of mankind, from Thibet to Hindostan, and from Algiers to Zululand, have gone down. At the news of gold, the grizzled '49or shook the dust of California from his feet, and started overland, accompanied by daring comrades, for the far-distant "Hills;" the Australian miner left his pick half buried in the antipodean sands, and started, by ship and saddle, for the same goal; the diamond hunter of Brazil and of "the Cape;" the veteran "prospectors" of Colorado and Western Montana; the "tar heels" of the Carolinian hills; the "reduced gentlemen" of Europe; the worried and worn city clerks of London, Liverpool, New York or Chicago; the stout English yeoman, tired of high

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