To the Army, soon after the Civil War, fell the task of
exterminating, or at least evicting, the savage tribes over all
this unvalued and unknown Middle West. This was a process not
altogether simple. For a considerable time the Indians themselves
were able to offer very effective resistance to the enterprise.
They were accustomed to living upon that country, and did not
need to bring in their own supplies; hence the Army fought them
at a certain disadvantage. In sooth, the Army had to learn to
become half Indian before it could fight the Indians on anything
like even terms. We seem not so much to have coveted the lands
in the first Indian-fighting days; we fought rather for the
trails than for the soil. The Indians themselves had lived there
all their lives, had conquered their environment, and were happy
in it. They made a bitter fight; nor are they to be blamed for
doing so.

The greatest of our Indian wars have taken place since our own
Civil War; and perhaps the most notable of all the battles are
those which were fought on the old cow range--in the land of our
last frontier. We do not lack abundant records of this time of
our history. Soon after the Civil War the railroads began edging
out into the plains. They brought, besides many new settlers, an
abundance of chroniclers and historians and writers of hectic
fiction or supposed fact. A multitude of books came out at this
time of our history, most of which were accepted as truth. That
was the time when we set up as Wild West heroes rough skinclad
hunters and so-called scouts, each of whom was allowed to tell
his own story and to have it accepted at par. As a matter of
fact, at about the time the Army had succeeded in subduing the