CHAPTER IV 



THE REVOLUTION ON THE PLAIN'S 



THE semi-arid portion of the Great Plains constitutes 

 a distinct division of the irrigation empire. Its history 

 and its problems are peculiarly its own. During the last 

 half century it has lived through three stirring and ro- 

 mantic epochs and entered upon a fourth. This last is 

 one of absorbing human interest, and will doubtless 

 shape the permanent civilization of the region. 



When Francis Parkman and the Mormon pioneers tra- 

 versed the country, late in the forties, it swarmed with 

 herds of buffalo and tribes of hostile Indians. It was the 

 era of savagery, broken only by the presence of a few 

 frontier posts, which served as the occasional refuge of 

 adventurers and hunters. 



Almost miraculously the buffalo disappeared, and the 

 red men retreated before the white wave which over- 

 flowed the western bank of the Mississippi and began 

 gradually to people the eastern margin of the plains. 

 Then the savagery of the desert suddenly gave way to 

 the semi-barbarism of an epoch of cattle-kings and cow- 

 boys. * 



Just as the Indian and the trapper had surrendered to 

 the cowboy and his herds, so the latter in their turn re- 

 ceded and largely disappeared before another element 



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