last of the Indian tribes on the buffalo-range, the most of our
Wild West history, at least so far as concerned the boldest
adventure, was a thing of the past. It was easy to write of a
past which every one now was too new, too ignorant, or too busy
critically to remember.

Even as early as 1866, Colonel Marcy, an experienced army officer
and Indian-fighter, took the attitude of writing about a
vanishing phase of American life. In his Army "Life on the
Border," he says:

"I have been persuaded by many friends that the contents of the
book which is herewith presented to the public are not without
value as records of a fast-vanishing age, and as truthful
sketches of men of various races whose memory will shortly depend
only on romance, unless some one who knew them shall undertake to
leave outlines of their peculiar characteristics.... I am
persuaded that excuse may be found in the simple fact that all
these peoples of my description--men, conditions of life, races
of
aboriginal inhabitants and adventurous hunters and pioneers--are
passing away. A few years more and the prairie will be
transformed into farms. The mountain ravines will be the abodes
of busy manufacturers, and the gigantic power of American
civilization will have taken possession of the land from the
great river of the West to the very shores of the Pacific....
The world is fast filling up. I trust I am not in error when I
venture to place some value, however small, on everything which
goes to form the truthful history of a condition of men incident
to the advances of civilization over the continent--a condition