in a few generations, be studded with great towns and would form
a part of the granary of the world.

But, if our early explorers, passing beyond the valley of the
Missouri, found valueless the region of the Plains and the
foothills, not so the wild creatures or the savage men who had
lived there longer than science records. The buffalo then ranged
from the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, from the Missouri to the
Rockies, and beyond. No one seems to have concluded in those days
that there was after all slight difference between the buffalo
and the domestic ox. The native cattle, however, in untold
thousands and millions, had even then proved beyond peradventure
the sustaining and strengthening nature of the grasses of the
Plains.

Now, each creature, even of human species, must adjust itself to
its environment. Having done so, commonly it is disposed to love
that environment. The Eskimo and the Zulu each thinks that he has
the best land in the world: So with the American Indian, who,
supported by the vast herds of buffalo, ranged all over that
tremendous country which was later to be given over to the white
man with his domestic cattle. No freer life ever was lived by any
savages than by the Horse Indians of the Plains in the buffalo
days; and never has the world known a physically higher type of
savage.

On the buffalo-range--that is to say, on the cattle-range which
was to be--Lewis and Clark met several bands of the Sioux--the
Mandans and the Assiniboines, the Blackfeet, the Shoshones.
Farther south were the Pawnees, the Kaws, the Otoes, the Osages,