Trouble with the Indians

ID # 907

TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS

As the Union Pacific Railroad builders pushed westward across the great plains in the middle and late 1860's, the Sioux, Cheyennes and other warlike tribes united to block the iron horse. The Indians made a desperate, futile effort to stop the white men's wholesale slaughter of buffalo herds which supplied their food, clothing and shelter. The Federal Government had solemnly pledged that So long as the Indians were peaceful, buffalo hunting would not be permitted south of the Arkansas River. But white men broke that treaty, railroad builders formed an alliance with the friendly Pawnees, and war was on. As shown in this painting, rails were torn up, ties destroy, trains wrecked, plundered and burned; and hundreds of men on both sides were killed. Blood sprinkled the route from Omaha, Nebraska, to Promontory Utah, where U. P. rails finally joined those of the eastward-advancing Central (now Southern) Pacific on May 10, 1869.

KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY