t night after night in
open camps while wolves and panthers crawled dangerously near. To all
intents and purposes their life was that of the Indian of the plains,
an alien to civilization, a hunter of buffalo, and an enemy to all
human beings except those of his own nation.

It was in the year 1846, three years before the discovery of gold in
California, and the great West was still a land of forests, and the
home of wandering tribes of Indians. From the Mississippi to the
Pacific coast the country was entirely unsettled, with the exception
of a few military forts and trading-posts. Here the Indian lived as
his race had lived from time immemorial. Dressed in his robe of skins,
with his gay moccasins on his feet, his dog-skin quiver at his back,
and his powerful bow slung across his shoulder, the Dacotah of that
day was a good specimen of a race that has almost disappeared. The
only two objects in life were war and the hunt, and he was ready at a
moment's notice to strike his tent and engage in either.

Six or eight times during the year the Great Spirit was called upon,
fasts were made, and war parades celebrated preliminary to attacks
upon other tribes, while during the remainder of the time he hunted
the buffalo which supplied him with every necessity of life. The
coverings for their tents, their clothing, beds, ropes, coverings for
their saddles, canoes, water-jars, food, and fuel, were all obtained
from this animal, which also served as a means of trading with the
posts. The Indians had obtained rifles from the whites in a few
cases, but they still largely used the bow and arrow, with which their
predecessors on the plains had hunted the mammoth and mastodon in
prehistoric ages. Their arrows were tipped with flint and stone, and
their stone hammers were like those used by the savages of the Danube
and Rhine when Europe was still uncivilized.

While civilization had laid a chain of cities and towns around the
borders of the continent, the American Indian of the interior remained
exactly as his forefathers had been. And it was to study this curious
specimen of humanity, whose like had faded from almost every other
part of the world, that Parkman had come among them. He wished to
reveal the Indian in his true character, and he thought he could only
do this by living the Indian life. And so, for six months, he shared
their lodges, their feasts, hunts, and expeditions of war. He became
acquainted with their beliefs in