In our terrain study last week, at the foot of Dead Indian Pass, Shayne and Ishmael convinced me, that if I were traveling alone or in a small group through hostile territory, that I would stay in the timber on the mountainside. I therefore placed meeting engagements at a slightly higher likelihood than ambushes. I had already taken the general study and narrowed it to focus on my subject. The resulting article might leave the reader to believe that it reflected the norm, where it does not, but rather reflects an anomalous type of operation. Most of the engagements we know of were conducted on a larger scale than a character like Liver-Eating Johnson would manage to outfit for a whiskey run or a small scale hunt.

Shayne called me on Monday morning and corrected my Sunday post Engaging The Enemy.

Since much travel was done in presumably friendly or neutral territory, and since most travel was conducted by platoon-strength parties capable of fighting off most far-ranging forces of Indians, most engagements in the high plains and Rocky Mountains occurred in open terrain, or broken terrain with long-range visibility, thus encouraging and facilitating ambushes, especially by forces which had posted mountain-side sentries.

So, in meadows and sage flats and along river bottoms, ambush would be far more likely than a meeting engagement.

Of course, for a man hunter or skulking whiskey trader/vigilante like the Liver-Eater, who rarely managed to gather a strong party for his ventures, his method of lone travel or travel with a partner or two, would conform to the original matrix in the article above. But for the vast majority of engagements involving Indians on the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains, the most lethal type of engagement, the ambush, would be closer in likelihood to the camp assault than the chance meeting.

Thank you, Shayne.