The ultimate destiny of these wild tribes, now The Indians 
hunting unrestrained through the Far West of the 
United States, can be foretold almost to a certainty, 
from the fate, already accomplished, of the eastern 
Indian tribes, where in the contact of races, true civi- 
lization collides with crude forces of nature, the lat- 
ter must succumb. Civilization, steadily pressing for- 
ward toward the West, has driven the Indians step 
by step before it. Where war with the whites and 
with each other was not enough to reduce their num- 
bers, the result was brought about by disease and ar- 
dent spirits. Whole tribes, that formerly dwelt in 
States where civilization is now permanently estab- 
lished, whose names perhaps were then as terrifying 
to the pioneers of the West as is now the word Black- 
feet to the mountaineer, have entirely disappeared, 
leaving scarce a trace of their name behind. Some 
few have accommodated themselves to agriculture, 
and still live among us, the shadows of a vanished 
race. The western tribes still have, as yet, a bulwark 
against the advance of civilization in the boundless, 
generally sandy prairie, which extends for about a 
thousand miles from the boundary of the State of 
Missouri to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in 
those mountains themselves, and in the broad sandy 
plains beyond them. But those obstacles are not in- 
surmountable. At least half of the great prairie is 
capable of cultivation ; and the want of wood, attrib- 
utable less to the nature of the soil than to the fre- 
quent prairie fires and to the quantities of game, espe- 
