Indian attacks in the west. The 18th Kansas Cavalry was brought up for four months as a result. Payne enlisted and was mustered in as the captain of Company D. This battalion replaced the Seventh Cavalry which had been transferred to the Platte River for the summer. In October 1868, Payne mustered in as a lieutenant in Company H of the 19th Kansas Cavalry, which served in a winter campaign against Indians on the western Great Plains. During this campaign, Payne served as a scout for General Philip Sheridan. In 1870 Payne moved to Sedgwick County, near Wichita, and the following year he was again elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. This led to appointments as Postmaster at Fort Leavenworth in 1867 and as Sergeant-at-arms for two terms of the Kansas Senate. In 1875 and 1879, Payne served as assistant to the Doorkeeper of the United States House of Representatives. During the intervals between political engagements and military service, Payne supported himself by hunting, scouting, and guiding wagon trains. Boomer In 1866, shortly after the Civil War, the Federal government forced many tribes in the Indian Territory into making concessions. The government accused the various tribes of abrogating the standing treaties by joining the Confederacy. As a result, some two million acres (8,000 km²) of land in the center of Indian Territory were ceded to the United States and thought by many to be public domain land. Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee citizen working as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., published an article about the public land issue in the February 17, 1879 edition of the Chicago Times. Dr. Morrison Munford of the Kansas City Times began referring to this tract as the "Unassigned Lands" or "Oklahoma" and to the people agitating for its settlement as Boomers. Munford is the first person to use the terms "boom" and "boomer" to describe the movement of white settlers into these lands. To prevent settlement of the land, President Rutherford B. Hayes issued a proclamation in April 1879 forbidding unlawful entry into Indian Territory. Inspired by Boudinot, Payne began his efforts to enter and settle the public domain lands as allowed by existing law. He returned from his job in Washington and returned to Wichita in 1879. On his first attempt to enter Indian Territory, in April 1880, Payne and his party laid out a town they named "Ewing" on the present-day site