h for the precious metals, was a thing of course.
The Oregon War followed, and occasional affairs like that at Ben
Wright's Cave, leaving a heritage of hate from which such fruits as the
recent Modoc War are not inaptly gathered.

In 1855-6 occurred the great movement, mainly under a political impulse,
which carried population beyond the Missouri. In two or three years the
tribes and bands which were native to Kansas and Nebraska, as well as
those which had been removed from States east of the Mississippi, were
suffering the worst effects of white intrusion. Of the Free-State party,
not a few zealous members seemed disposed to compensate themselves for
their benevolent efforts on behalf of the negro by crowding the Indian
to the wall; while the slavery propagandists steadily maintained their
consistency by impartially persecuting the members of both the inferior
races.

Thus far we have shown how, instead of the natural boundary between the
races which was contemplated in the establishment of the Indian policy
of the government under Pres. Monroe, two lines of settlement had, prior
to 1860, been pushed against the Indians,--one eastward from the
Pacific, one westward from the Missouri, driving the natives in many
cases from the soil guaranteed to them by treaty, and otherwise leaving
them at a hundred points in dangerous contact with a border population
not apt to be nice in its sense of justice, or slow to retaliate real or
fancied injuries; while, during the same period, a colony of religious
fanatics, foreign to the faith, and very largely also to the blood, of
our people, was planted in the very heart of the Indian country, with
passions strongly aroused against the government, and with interests
opposed to the peace and security of the frontier.

But it was not until after the Civil War that the progress of events
dealt its heaviest blow at the policy of Indian seclusion. In 1867-8 the
great plough of industrial civilization drew its deep furrow across the
continent, from the Missouri to the Pacific, as a sign of dissolution to
the immemorial possessors of the soil. Already the Pacific Railroad has
brought changes which, without it, might have been delayed for half a
century. Not only has the line of settlement been made continuous from
Omaha to Sacramento, so far as the character of the soil will permit;
but from a score of points upon the railroad population has gone north
and gone south, following up the cours