map--and one which I wish we might show--which would depict in
different colors the great occupied areas of the West, with the
earliest dates of their final and permanent occupation. Such a
map as this would show us that the last frontier of America was
overleaped and left behind not once but a score of times.

The land between the Missouri and the Rockies, along the Great
Plains and the high foothills, was crossed over and forgotten by
the men who were forging on into farther countries in search of
lands where fortune was swift and easy. California, Oregon, all
the early farming and timbering lands of the distant Northwest--
these lay far beyond the Plains; and as we have noted, they were
sought for, even before gold was dreamed of upon the Pacific
Slope.

So here, somewhere between the Missouri and the Rockies, lay our
last frontier, wavering, receding, advancing, gaining and losing,
changing a little more every decade--and at last so rapidly
changed as to be outworn and abolished in one swift decade all
its own.

This unsettled land so long held in small repute by the early
Americans, was, as we have pointed out, the buffalo range and the
country of the Horse Indians--the Plains tribes who lived upon
the buffalo. For a long time it was this Indian population which
held back the white settlements of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas,
Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. But as men began to work farther and
farther westward in search of homes in Oregon, or in quest of
gold in California or Idaho or Montana, the Indian question came
to be a serious one.