So when Joshua Pilcher became commissioner of Indian affairs after the death of General Clarke, the influence of the American Fur Company was such that they were able to secure the appointment of Andrew Drips, an employee of the company at Fort Laramie, as resident agent. It raised quite a storm of protest from the other traders, but the department soon became fully advised that it was only because he enforced on other traders the same strict observances of liquor laws, that the American Fur Company had observed for years.

Renegades from the Spanish domain found

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

the hazards too great to be inviting, but continued intermittent attempts to get liquor through to the North Platte valley.

Finding the caches and destroying the liquors in the vicinity of the fort were so frequent that the traffic was soon practically abandoned.

One outlaw, a squawman by name of Richards, continued, however, and built a small stockade about six miles east of the fort on

the south side of the river. He is mentioned by Francis Parkman, who visited him in 1847. This man Richards gave the federal authorities no little trouble, but in resisting a detachment from Fort Laramie, which had been seent out to destroy the quantity of liquor which he had brought in from the south, he was killed about 1850.

ROBIDEAUX OF ST. GENEVIEVE -- KIOWA RAID BY RED CLOUD

Sources of information in matters of history are often widely scattered, and the stories themselves are made from putting together little fragments gathered here and there ; some from records, and others from ptrsonal encounters with people having fragmentary knowledge of the events which one is trying to assemble.