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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Travel on the plains and in the 

 mountains between 1861 and IST-t was 

 not without its adventures and its 

 thrills. Hunting experiences were 

 many; buffalo hunts and stalks for 

 smaller game were exciting; grizzly 



bears and wolves threatened, and some- 

 times Indians captured. He who had 

 a part in such events cannot forget 

 them, and it is a joy to have one's 

 recollections stirred l)y paintings of 

 these old-time scenes. 



I ,■',,' I In- iHiintuKj by Car!/ 

 Indian Boy Feeding His Pet Vrow (a portion only of the painting). — Indian children, like all 

 others, are fond of pets. Besides their puppies, they often had young magpies, crows, antelope, foxes, 

 rabbits, and perhaps even a buffalo calf 



Editorial Note. — The Journal, counts it a privilege to print this article by Dr. George Bird Grinnell, 

 who writes so charmingly of the time depicted by the Gary paintings, yet lets fall no word of his own ex- 

 periences of the Early West and of his authority as a writer on that period of America's development. For 

 those not acquainted with Dr. Grinnell we give the following brief account of his years in the West and 

 activities there, and also of his very notable achievements in the direction of conservation of our forests 

 and wild life. 



His western experiences began immediately after his graduation from Yale when in 1M70 lie set out 

 under Prof. O. C. Marsh on a six months' expedition in search of fossils. Four years later he accompanied 

 General Custer's expedition to the Black Hills of Dakota, and in 1875 he accompanied Colonel — afterward 

 General — William Ludlow on his survey of the country from Carroll, Montana, to the Yellowstone Na- 

 tional Park. 



In 1885, and in subsequent years, he explored the region, then unknown, which is now the Glacier 

 National Park, making the first sketch map and naming some of the natural features. About 1895 he 

 took up, together with Senator T. H. Carter, of Montana, the question of setting it aside as a national 

 park, and in May, 1910, the Glacier National Park was finally established. It was in 1895 also that he 

 was appointed United States commissioner to treat with the Blackfeet and Fort Belknaj) Indians for the 

 cession to the United States of a portion of their land. 



Dr. Grinnell not only was connected with the development of the West in this public way, but also iden- 

 tified himself personally with the pioneer life there to the extent of owning and managing a horse and 

 cattle ranch in Wyoming from 1882 to about 1900. 



For many years he has been interested in forest preservation and the conservation of wild life, and he 

 worked long in behalf of the establishment in New York City of a zoological park — an establishment finally 

 accomplished by the energy of Mr. Madison Grant in founding the New York Zoological Society. He or- 

 ganized the Audubon Society for the protection of birds as early as 1886, and it was while president of 

 the Forest and Stream Publishing Company and editor of its magazine that he used his opportunity 

 through that journal to conduct a long fight for the preservation of the threatened integrity of the great 

 Yellowstone National Park. 



Dr. Grinnell is the author of many books dealing with the early history of the West and with Indians — 

 and the editor of others. In 1870 and the years following he spent much time in the Old Pawnee earth- 

 lodge village on the Loup Fork, where the town of Genoa, Nebraska, now stands. In 1872 he accompanied 

 a camp of four thousand Pawnees, Omahas, and Otoes on their summer buffalo hunt, and some of the 

 incidents of this trip are described in his early book on the Pawnee Indians. Later he saw much of the 

 Blackfeet, the Cheyennes, and certain branches of the Arapahos. Dr. Grinnell has recently become con- 

 nected with the American Museum of Natural History as research associate in ethnology. 



