INTRODUCTION. xlvii 



will take up a map of the United States, and contrast what 

 was then and what is now the home and hunting grounds 

 of the Indian. The Indians have been removed or driven 

 from time to time still farther west, and the fertile States 

 of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and parts of 

 Missouri, have been carved out of their ancient terri- 

 tories. This rapid occupation of their lands cannot be 

 better described than by quoting the testimony of an old 

 Sioux chief, given at an Indian Council not many years 

 since. The chief is reported to have said : ' When I was 

 a young man (and I am now only fifty years old), I 

 travelled with my people through the country of the 

 Sac and Fox tribe to the great water Minne Tonkah 

 (Mississippi), where I saw corn growing, but no white 

 people. Continuing eastward we came to the Eock Eiver 

 Valley, and saw the Winnebagoes, but no white people. 

 We then came to the Fox Eiver Valley, and thence to 

 the great lake (Lake Michigan), where we found a few 

 white people in the Pottawatomie country. Thence we 

 returned to the Sioux country at the Great Falls (Falls of 

 St. Anthony), and had a feast of green corn with our 

 relations who resided there. Afterwards we visited the 

 pipe-clay quarry, in the country of the Yankton Sioux, 

 and made a feast to the " great medicine," and danced 

 the " Sun-dance," and then returned to our hunting 

 grounds on the Prairie. And now our "father" tells 

 us the white man will never settle on our lands and kill 

 our game ; but see ! the whites cover all these lands that 

 I have just described, and also the lands of the Ponchas, 

 Omahas, and Pawnees. On the south fork of the Platte 

 the white people are finding gold, and the Arrapahoes 

 and Cheyennes have no longer any hunting-grounds. Our 

 country has become very small, and before our children 

 are grown up, we shall have no more game/ 



Florida, also, was wrested from the Seminoles, and 



