It results then from our remarks that the Spaniards who, during three centuries, incessantly massacred the Indians, succeeded in increasing their numbers; while the North Americans who are so philosophical and such philanthropists have attained a diametrically opposite result, and during the sixty years since they proclaimed their independence, in spite of all the efforts made to civilize the Indians, they have nearly exterminated those tribes which dwell on their territory.
It must be confessed that this is a most unfortunate result! We will stop here, for every thinking man will be enabled to draw the sole logical conclusion from our remarks without our dilating on them.
About forty years before the period at which our story begins, two of the most important tribes of the Comanche nation suddenly quarrelled after an expedition they had made in common against the Apaches, the irreconcilable enemies of the Comanches, with whom they alone dare to dispute the supremacy on the great prairies of the Far West.
This expedition had been completely successful: a winter village of the Apaches was surprised by night, the horses were carried off, and sixty scalps raised.
The warriors returned to the gathering place of their nation, singing, dancing, and celebrating their exploits, as they are accustomed to do when, in an expedition of this nature, they have killed several of their enemies without any loss on their own side. This had been the case on the present occasion. The Apache warriors, aroused from deep sleep, had fallen like ripe corn beneath the tomahawks of the Comanches as they sought to escape from their burning lodges without thought of arming themselves.
In spite of all the care taken in the division of the plunder that each tribe might be equally favoured, the chiefs did not succeed in satisfying everybody; the warriors who thought themselves defrauded gave way to recriminations; tempers were heated, and, as always happens with men who constantly go about armed, they proceeded almost immediately from words to blows.
There was a battle; blood followed in streams, and then the two tribes separated, swearing a deadly hatred, though it was impossible to discover whence the quarrel originated, or which side was in the wrong. These two tribes were the "White Horse" and the "Red Buffalo."
Then a war began between these old friends which threatened to be indefinitely prolonged; but one day the Red Buffaloes, being surprised by their enemies, were almost entirely exterminated, after a fight that lasted two days, and in which even the squaws took part.
The vanquished, reduced to about fifty warriors and the same number of women and children, sought safety in flight, but being hotly pursued, they were compelled to cross the Indian border, and seek a refuge upon Spanish territory.
Here they drew breath. The Spanish government allowed them to settle in the neighbourhood of the Fort of Agua Verde, and granted them the right of self-government, while recognizing the authority of the king of Spain, and pledging themselves to be guilty of no exactions of any sort.