This summary execution brought much criticism, and the easterners whose sob squad had been after the scalp of Colonel Moonlight and others of his strong kind, sent up a howl that was heard as far as Washington, and one mountaineer and trader said it would center the Indians at Fort Laramie for revenge, and "we will all be masscred," he declared. Colonel Moonlight's answer was that perhaps such would be the case, but if so, there would be three mighty bad Indians that would not be there to participate in the massacre.

The sentimentalists finally secured Colonel Moonlight's scalp, but there are those who still approve of him and his way of fighting Indians. The methods employed by the people of the west were ofttimes severe, and really shocking to the senses, but the lessons were measurably necessary to bring home a realization to the savages. While the boasting of an Indian, as to what he intends to do, is not meet offense for a severe penalty, these three who boasted to Colonel Moonlight, had a record, and it was a record of taking children by the heels and beating their brains out against logs and stones, and it was a record of horrible torture to western women, and they boasted of this and said they would do more, and dared the penalty.

I am not surprised that General Harney obtained the name "squaw killer," at the battle of Blue Water, for at that time it seemed that the extermination of the Indian race was the best solution of a bad problem. And it is no wonder that Qister said, when they accused him of throwing papooses into the South Platte river. after he had destroyed an Indian village, "if you kill the nits there will be no lice."