The American Wilderness. 9 



dian chief, became the President of the new Republic, 

 and, after its admission into the United States, a Senator 

 at Washington ; and, to his high honor, he remained to the 

 end of his days staunchly loyal to the flag of the Union. 



By the time that Crockett fell, and Houston became 

 the darling leader of the Texans, the typical hunter and 

 Indian fighter had ceased to be a backwoodsman ; he 

 had become a plains-man, or mountain-man ; for the 

 frontier, east of which he never willingly went, had been 

 pushed beyond the Mississippi. Restless, reckless, and 

 hardy, he spent years of his life in lonely wanderings 

 through the Rockies as a trapper ; he guarded the slow- 

 moving caravans, which for purposes of trade journeyed 

 over the dangerous Santa Fe trail ; he guided the large 

 parties of frontier settlers who, driving before them their 

 cattle, with all their household goods in their white- 

 topped wagons, spent perilous months and seasons on 

 their weary way to Oregon or California. Joining in 

 bands, the stalwart, skin-clad riflemen waged ferocious 

 war on the Indians scarcely more savage than themselves, 

 or made long raids for plunder and horses against the 

 outlying Mexican settlements. The best, the bravest, 

 the most modest of them all was the renowned Kit Car- 

 son. He was not only a mighty hunter, a daring fighter, 

 a finder of trails, and maker of roads through the un- 

 known, untrodden wilderness, but also a real leader of 

 men. Again and again he crossed and re-crossed the 

 continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific ; he guided 

 many of the earliest military and exploring expeditions of 

 the United States Government ; he himself led the troops 



