William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[189] avail against White strength and discipline. Shot, brained, cut down, they fell on every rock, round every tree. Nothing less than their destruction could appease the White man's rage. The sun went down on a victorious field; a hundred braves lying dead, and all the stolen stock brought back to camp. Nobody ever learned the Indian loss that day. Indians use much care in carrying off their dead, in order to reduce the enemy's tale of scalps; but in the following summer, emigrants found the bones of many warriors who had evidently been sped by White men's bullets to the land of souls. That skirmish cleared the track, and helped to break the Shoshone power.

Smitten by this sudden loss, the tribe reeled to and fro, unable to decide on any course. One party was opposed to fighting any more; a second party was for instant war. They fought each other, and while they were fighting in their camps, the White man built his ranch and made his road. From time to time a ranch is robbed, a woman stolen, a settler scalped; but in an Indian country no one makes a fuss for trifles, and the desolated ranch gets tenanted again. A bolder crime provokes a chase,