Apollo, thou of gods
        The mightiest, who in guard the sacred mount
        Soracte holdest, and whom first of all
        We worship, unto whom are heaped the fires
        The piney branches make, and whom adore
        Thy votaries, as we walk, by pious zeal
        Sustained, on burning coals.

[60] The White Chief, by George P. Belden.  Edited by General James S. Brisbin.  Published by C. F. Vent; Cincinnati, 1872.

[61] Niobrara.

[62] The Southern Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahoes waged an unrelenting war along the whole line of the border from Nebraska to Texas, under the leadership of the dreaded Sa-tan-ta.

[63] Jack Stead was a runaway sailor boy.  He was on the Peacock when it was wrecked years ago near the mouth of the Columbia River.  He lived for years in the Rocky Mountains, and was the first man to report to the United States government the Mormon preparations to resist it.  He had a Cheyenne wife, was a good story-teller, and loved whiskey.

[64] William Frederick Cody ("Buffalo Bill"), the scout, guide, and Indian fighter, was born on the 26th of February, 1846, in a primative log-cabin in the backwoods of Iowa.  In 1852, the family removed to Kansas, where the father of young Cody, two years later, became a martyr to the Free State cause.  From the moment the family was thus deprived of its support, the only boy, though a mere child, at the age of nine years, commenced his career.  As a collaborator in the preparation of this work, he has been prevailed upon to relate all the incidents of his life, so far as they confined to the region of which this volume treats. [E-text editor’s note:  They encompass chapters 16 and 17 in their entirety.  In the original book, every paragraph appeared in quotation marks.] For his further adventures in the Arkansas Valley and south of it, see The Old Santa Fe Trail.

[65] Long poles, one fastened on each side of a pony, the ends dragging on the ground far to the rear; on these the dead and wounded were carried.  The Indians also move their camp equipage by this primitive means of transportation.

[66] Strange as it may seem, this savage, instead of being moved with hatred toward Colonel Cody, as a civilized woman would have been under similar circumstances, actually looked upon him with special favour and esteemed it quite an honour that her husband, a great warrior himself, should have met his death at the hands of such a brave man as the Prairie Chief, the name the Indians had given to the colonel.

[67] Nelson is still shooting Indians from the top of the old Deadwood stage-coach in the Wild West show.

[68] The rendezvous, in trapper’s parlance, was a point somewhere in the region where the agents of the fur companies congregate to purchase the season’s catch, and where the traders brought such goods as trappers needed, to sell.