given to them along their lines, and they began to offer these
lands for sale to settlers. Soldier scrip entitling the holder to
locate on public lands now began to float about. Some of the
engineers, even some of the laborers, upon the railroads, seeing
how really feasible was the settlement of these Plains, began to
edge out and to set up their homes, usually not far from the
railway lines. All this increase in the numbers of the white
population not only infuriated the Indians the more, but gave
them the better chance to inflict damage upon our people. Our
Army therefore became very little more than a vast body of
police, and it was always afoot with the purpose of punishing
these offending tribesmen, who knew nothing of the higher laws of
war and who committed atrocities that have never been equalled in
history; unless it be by one of the belligerents of the Great War
in Europe, with whom we are at this writing engaged--once more in
the interest of a sane and human civilization. The last great
struggle for the occupation of the frontier was on. It involved
the ownership of the last of our open lands; and hence may be
called the war of our last frontier.

The settler who pushed West continued to be the man who shared
his time between his rifle and his plough. The numerous buffalo
were butchered with an endless avidity by the men who now
appeared upon the range. As the great herds regularly migrated
southward with each winter's snows, they were met by the settlers
along the lower railway lines and in a brutal commerce were
killed in thousands and in millions. The Indians saw this sudden
and appalling shrinkage of their means of livelihood. It meant
death to them. To their minds, especially when they thought we
feared them, there was but one answer to all this--the whites