Ranching in the Bad Lands. 19 



dreamed of saying that these hunters owned the country. 

 Each could eventually have kept his own claim of 160 

 acres, and no more. The Indians should be treated in 

 just the same way that we treat the white settlers. Give 

 each his little claim; if, as would generally happen, he 

 declined this, why then let him share the fate of the 

 thousands of white hunters and trappers who have lived 

 on the game that the settlement of the country has ex- 

 terminated, arid let him, like these whites, who will not 

 work, perish from the face of the earth which he cumbers. 



The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is ; but it is just 

 and rational for all that. It does not do to be merciful to 

 a few, at the cost of justice to the many. The cattle-men 

 at least keep herds and build houses on the land ; yet I 

 would not for a moment debar settlers from the right of 

 entry to the cattle country, though their coming in means 

 in the end the destruction of us and our industry. 



For we ourselves, and the life that we lead, will shortly 

 pass away from the plains as completely as the red and 

 white hunters who have vanished from before our herds. 

 The free, open-air life of the ranchman, the pleasantest and 

 healthiest life in America, is from its very nature ephemeral. 

 The broad and boundless prairies have already been 

 bounded and will soon be made narrow. It is scarcely a 

 figure of speech to say that the tide of white settlement 

 during the last few years has risen over the west like a 

 flood ; and the cattle-men are but the spray from the crest 

 of the wave, thrown far in advance, but soon to be over- 

 taken. As the settlers throng into the lands and seize the 

 good ground, especially that near the streams, the great 



