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to the Fort Sumner colony. A band of Utes, captured in Colorado, swelled the Indian population of Bosque Redondo to nearly ten thousand.

Kit Carson, then a brigadier general, was appointed superintendent of the settlement. He had lived among the Indians, understood them, and had the welfare of the race at heart. Guarded by troops, the Indians were kept at farming and constructive labours. Fifteen hundred acres were planted to grain and vegetables. An irrigating ditch seven miles long was constructed to water their farms. For a time, the colony was contented and prosperous and New Mexico's Indian problem seemed on the verge of solution. But there came a year of crop failure, supplies ran short, the aboriginal agriculturists were threatened with starvation, and trouble developed between Navajos and Apaches, who had been immemorial enemies. As a result, the Indians were sent back to their old homes, and the Government's experiment at transforming warrior tribes into peaceful farmers ended in disaster.

Fort Sumner stood on the north bank of the Pecos where the river makes a wide turn to the southeast. After its abandonment as a military post, settlers moved into its buildings, and it became a town that remained an army post with the army left out. In Garrett's day, Pete Maxwell lived with his mother, Mrs. Luz Maxwell, and his sister, Paulita Maxwell, and the family servants, in a great two-story house that had been officers' quarters and faced the spacious parade ground to the east. To the north and south were rows of adobe houses that had been the barracks of the soldiers and were now the homes of Mexican and white families. Stores and saloons backed against the river suggested that the wide, unpaved space