THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS. 23 



portable. These early hunters were all trap- 

 pers likewise, and, indeed, used their rifles 

 only to procure meat or repel attacks. 

 The chief of the fur-bearing animals they 

 followed was the beaver, which abounded in 

 the streams of the plains and mountains ; 

 in the far north they also trapped otter, mink, 

 sable, and fisher. They married squaws from 

 among the Indian tribes, with which they 

 happened for the moment to be at peace ; 

 they acted as scouts for the United States 

 troops in their campaigns against the tribes 

 with which they happened to be at war. 



Soon after the Civil War the life of these 

 hunters, taken as a class, entered on its final 

 stage. The Pacific coast was already fairly 

 well settled, and there were a few mining 

 camps in the Rockies ; but most of this 

 Rocky Mountains region, and the entire 

 stretch of plains country proper, the vast belt 

 of level or rolling grassland lying between the 

 Rio Grande and the Saskatchewan, still re- 

 mained primeval wilderness, inhabited only 

 by roving hunters and formidable tribes of 

 Indian nomads, and by the huge herds of 

 game on which they preyed. Beaver swarmed 

 in the streams and yielded a rich harvest to 

 the trapper ; but trapping was no longer the 

 mainstay of the adventurous plainsmen. 

 Foremost among the beasts of the chase, on 

 account of its numbers, its size, and its eco- 

 nomic importance, was the bison or American 

 buffalo ; its innumerable multitudes darkened 

 the limitless prairies. As the transcontinental 

 railroads were pushed towards completion, 

 and the tide of settlement rolled onwards 



