on of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians
were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the
prospector, the trader and the settler.

The Mexican War was a slight affair, involving a relatively small outlay
in men and money. The total number of American soldiers killed in the
war was 1,721; the wounded were 4,102; the deaths from accident and
disease were 11,516, making total casualties of 5,823 and total losses
of 15,618.[32]

The money cost of the Mexican War--the army and navy appropriations for
the years 1846 to 1849 inclusive--was $119,624,000. Obviously the net
cost of the war was less than this gross total,--how much less it is
impossible to say.

No satisfactory figures are available to show the cost in men and money
of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. "From 1849 to 1865, the government
expended $30,000,000 in the subjugation of the Indians in the
territories of New Mexico and Arizona."[33] Their character may be
gauged by noting from the "Historical Register" (Vol. 2, p. 281-2) the
losses sustained in the four Indian Wars of which a record is preserved.
In the Northwest Indian Wars (1790 to 1795) 896 persons were killed and
436 were wounded; in the Seminole War (1817 to 1818) 46 were killed and
36 were wounded; in the Black Hawk War (1831-2) the killed were 26 and
the wounded 39; in the Seminole War (1835-1842) 383 were killed and 557
wounded. These were among the most serious of the Indian Wars and in all
of them the cost in life and limb was small. Judged on this standard,
the losses in the Southwest, during the Indian Wars, were, at most,
trifling. The total outlay that was involved in the conquest of the vast
domain would not have covered one first class battle of the Great War,
and yet this outlay added to the territory of the United States
something like a million square miles containing some of the richest and
most productive portions of the earth's surface.

This domain was won by a process of military conquest; it was taken from
the Mexicans and the Indians by force of arms. In order to acquire it,
it was necessary to drive whole tribes from their villages; to burn; to
maim; to kill. "St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio,
Santa Fe and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen and
Spaniards; we did not found them but we conquered them." "The Southwest
was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original
owners" (p. 26). "The winning of t