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Show 24 WESTERN WILDS. idents of the Indian Territory. Cooper's Indians are extinct, but the " noble red man," in a certain sense, does exist, and I have seen him. But not near the settlements. One must go far into the interior, where they are the style and he the oddity, to see really interesting In-dians. How inferior are the Pawnees to the Sioux, the Kaws to the Utes, the Osages and Otoes to the Navajoes! A few tribes may pass successfully across the awful gulf between savage life and civilized, but there is a fearful waste of raw material in the process. My travels in Nebraska drew near a close, and I stood at evening of a beauti-ful summer day, upon a lofty hill that overlooked the fertile Platte Valley. Southward the scene was bounded by the heavy timber lining that stream; east-ward I looked over a landscape rich in natural and artificial beauty to the for-ests on the Missouri ; northward the winding Elkhorn could be traced many a mile by the tasteful groves which adorn its bluffs, while westward the view was free to the meeting of earth and sky. That way lay adventure and novel scenes ; that way I was mightily drawn. The haze of evening softened the outlines of a beautiful landscape ; from the eastward came the rumble and smoke of a Union Pacific train dashing out for Cheyenne, while westward up the valley a vagrant party of Pawnees were fast pressing out of sight. The scene was an emblem of progress. I breathed the spirit of border-land poetry. The Bedouin instinct stirred within me, and I burned to hasten my departure to that newer West, which already made this region seem old. But before I enter on the long detail of my Western wan-derings, let me briefly sketch the labors and perils of a ' 49- er, who passed that way nineteen years before me. 1 CIVILIZED." |