"E.C. Lockwood was a lad in his teens working as a paymaster ...

"One day he saw seventeen Sioux Indians under the leadership of Spotted Tail ride up to the tracks ..."


A snippet from the Stephen E. Ambrose Western History classic: Nothing Like It In The World: The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869.


Pages 209 - 210.


"E.C. Lockwood was a lad in his teens working as a paymaster for the Casement brothers out on the line.

"One day he saw seventeen Sioux Indians under the leadership of Spotted Tail ride up to the tracks.

"Jack Casement received them cordially and showed them the process of track laying.

"At one point he took them through one of the cars with U.S. Army rifles stacked horizontally on one of the walls.

"Lockwood found it interesting to see the expressions on their faces.

"But then the impression turned, Casement had Lockwood put up a shovel sixty feet or so away, then challenged the Indians to show what they could do with their bows and arrows.

"Lockwood later wrote, Sixteen of the Indians put their arrows through the hole in the handle, while the seventeenth hit handle at the hole, knocking the shovel over. He felt quite disgraced.

"Next came a race between the Indians on their ponies and the locomotive.

"Spotted Tail got into the cab of the engine along with Casement and Lockwood, while the warriors lined up four abreast for the word to go."


Now, as Lockwood tells us in his own words:


"Away they went.

"At first the Indians outdistanced the locomotive, which so pleased them that they gave their Indian war whoop.

"But presently the engine gathered speed, then overhauled them.

"The engineer as he passed opened his whistle, which so startled them that all, as if by word of command, swung to the offside of their ponies.

"Of course this ended the race ..."

Man, if only this sort of amiable diplomacy could have had a chance to prevail, who knows what bloodshed might have been avoided??!!