x Introduction 



as when in later years he wrote the graphic yet ac 

 curate and well-poised studies of those Western 

 movements, military and civil, that created the Mis 

 sissippi Valley (comprised in the series of volumes 

 entitled The Winning of the West), there was on his 

 part just as much a sense of dealing with realities as 

 when in 1899 he wrote out the story of the part 

 played by his regiment of Rough Riders in the Span 

 ish-American war of the year before. 



The circumstances which took him to the West in 

 1884 to become for some years a cattle ranchman, a 

 resident of the great plains, and an exponent of hunt 

 ing and frontier life, involved in no manner an in 

 terruption of the career upon which he had made so 

 propitious an entrance. On the contrary, this was 

 the best possible step that could have been taken for 

 the rounding out and development of the career of a 

 man destined, either in letters or in action, to spend 

 his life in dealing with American affairs from a 

 broad standpoint. 



Many of the most marked traits of the American 

 people have been evolved through the process of pio 

 neering. For three centuries our people have been 

 engaged in subduing a continent that they had found 

 a pathless wilderness. No man who has lacked con 

 tact with some concrete phases of our pioneering life 

 can ever wholly enter into the spirit of the nation's 

 historical development, or perfectly understand the 

 inherited qualities of our present-day citizenship. 



