LIFEINTHEFARWEST. Ill 



"snow before the sun." Although aware of the destruction it 

 entailr: ^iVpon them, the poor wretches have not moral courage to 

 shun the fatal allurement it holds out to them, of wild excitement 

 and a temporary oblivion of their many sufferings and privations. 

 "With such palpable effects, it appears only likely that the illegal 

 trade is connived at by those whose policy it has ever been, grad- 

 ually but surely, to exterminate the Indians, and by any means to 

 extinguish their title to the few lands they now own on the 'out- 

 skirts of civilization. Certain it is that large quantities of liquor 

 find their way annually into the Indian country, and as certain 

 are the fatal results of the pernicious system, and that the Amer- 

 ican government takes no steps to prevent it. There are some 

 tribes who have as yet withstood the great temptation, and have 

 resolutely refused to permit liquor to be brought into their villages. 

 The marked difference between the improved condition of these, 

 and the moral and physical abasement of those which give way to 

 the fatal passion for drinking, sufficiently proves the pernicious 

 effects of the liquor trade on the unfortunate and abused aborig- 

 ines ; and it is matter of regret that no philanthropist has sprung 

 up in the United States to do battle for the rights of the Red 

 men, and call attention to the wrongs they endure at the hands of 

 their supplanters in the lands of their fathers. 



Robbed of their homes and hunting-grounds, and driven by the 

 encroachments of the whites to distant regions, which hardly sup- 

 port existence, the Indians, day by day, gradually decrease before 

 the accumulating evils, of body and soul, which their civilized 

 persecutors entail upon them. With every man's hand against 

 them, they drag on to their final destiny ; and the day is not far 

 distant when the American Indian will exist only in the traditions 

 of his pale-faced conquerors. 



The Indians trading at this time on the Platte were mostly of 

 the Sioux nation, including the tribes of Burnt- woods, Yanka-taus, 

 Pian-Kashas, Assinaboins, Oglallahs, Broken Arrows, all of which 



