ian trade
that centered at St. Louis had been important ever since 1820, with an
influence upon the Indians of the plains similar to the influence of the
northern fur trade upon the Indians of the forest. By 1840 the removal
policy had effected the transfer of most of the eastern tribes to lands
across the Mississippi. Tribal names that formerly belonged to Ohio and
the rest of the Old Northwest were found on the map of the Kansas
Valley. The Platte country belonged to the Pawnee and their neighbors,
and to the north along the Upper Missouri were the Sioux, or Dakota,
Crow, Cheyenne, and other horse Indians, following the vast herds of
buffalo that grazed on the Great Plains. The discovery of California
gold and the opening of the Oregon country, in the middle of the
century, made it necessary to secure a road through the Indian lands for
the procession of pioneers that crossed the prairies to the Pacific. The
organization of Kansas and Nebraska, in 1854, was the first step in the
withdrawal of these territories from the Indians. A period of almost
constant Indian hostility followed, for the savage lords of the
boundless prairies instinctively felt the significance of the entrance
of the farmer into their empire. In Minnesota the Sioux took advantage
of the Civil War to rise; but the outcome was the destruction of their
reservations in that State, and the opening of great tracts to the
pioneers. When the Pacific railways were begun, Red Cloud, the astute
Sioux chief, who, in some ways, stands as the successor of Pontiac and
of Tecumthe, rallied the principal tribes of the Great Plains to resist
the march of civilization. Their hostility resulted in the peace measure
of 1867 and 1868, which assigned to the Sioux and their allies
reservations embracing the major portion of Dakota territory, west of
the Missouri River. The systematic slaughter of millions of buffalo, in
the years between 1866 and 1873, for the sake of their hides, put an end
to the vast herds of the Great Plains, and destroyed the economic
foundation of the Indians. Henceforth they were dependent on the whites
for their food supply, and the Great Plains were open to the cattle
ranchers.

In a preface written in 1872 for a new edition of "The Oregon Trail,"
which had appeared in 1847, Francis Parkman said, "The wild cavalcade
that defiled with me down the gorges of the Black Hills, with its paint
and war plumes, fluttering trophies and savage embroidery, bo