The Flight of the Nez Perce

My personal energy is not great as you know and it is completely exhausted by the time I have ridden 25 miles horseback, waited two or three hours in the sunshine for the pack train to come up and then opened my desk and pitched into orders and telegrams for the day My work is never foreseen never dawns upon me but bursts forth with the most startling unexpectedness. A ragged courier or a naked Indian dashing madly into camp at any hour of the day or night may bring to me work enough to last a month.

In fact I wish to impress you with the idea that I am an overworked much abused individual and so enough of Self. The command is pretty well-I might insert "tired" there-but rather homesick I imagine....

We are all equally penniless, naked and careless as becomes banditti of the frontier. I am probably more artistically and picturesquely ragged than any other officer... I stand clothed in dignity and a pair buckskin patched pants out at the knees and fringed at the bottoms, with the wreck of a white slouch wilted on my head and a tattered blouse fluttering on my back....

Everyone, believe me, is sick and tired of a fruitless pursuit of these Indians. ... General Howard seems determined to follow them up in the (vain) hope I suppose, of overtaking them.... Not many officers are in sympathy with him, and a great many think he is guilty of folly of the gravest kind to follow on at the expense of loss in men and animals in a hopeless pursuit.