Changes

''"In the Autumn of 1868, whilst crossing the plains on the Kansas Pacific Railroad…we passed through an almost unbroken herd of buffalo. The Plains were blackened with them, and more than once the train had to stop to allow unusually large herds to pass. A few years afterwards, when travelling over the same line of railroad, it was a rare sight to see a few herds from ten to twenty buffalo.”

With isolated exceptions, this mass hunting took place north of the Arkansas River; therefore, the hunters acted in accordance with the treaties agreed upon by the South Plains tribes and the United States government.

== Conclusion ==

The Red River War was a series of engagements fought between the United States Army and the war parties of the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne tribes. By enabling white buffalo hunters to breach the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the military leaders fostered the desire for war among the war factions of the tribes. Further, the neglect on the part of the federal government to provide rations to the peaceful reservation Indians exacerbated the feeling among the tribes that they needed to feed and protect themselves. In the early part of May 1874, agent Miles had no food to provide and the nearest herds of buffalo were more than one hundred-fifty miles from the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation. Miles had no choice but to allow his tribes off the reservation in order to hunt buffalo. These two tribes proceeded in the direction of the Staked Plains on the Texas panhandle where they encountered the white hunting parties at a settlement named Adobe Walls. This was the beginning of the Red River War.