, with the first white settlers, organising a Provisional Government after the plan of Oregon, became himself the first Governor of Kansas-Nebraska.
Oh, Little Crow! Little Crow! what crimes were committed in thy name! In the midst of the war, 1862, Little Crow the third arose against the white settlers of Minnesota in one of the most frightful massacres recorded in history. Then came Sibley's expedition sweeping on west, opening the Dakotas and Montana.
The Indian? He fought and was vanquished. How we are beginning to love our Indians, now that we fear them no longer! No wild man ever so captured the imagination of the world. With inherent nobility, courage to the border of destruction, patriotism to the death, absolutely refusing to be enslaved, he stands out the most perfect picture of primeval man. We might have tamed him but we had not time. The movement was too swift, the pressure behind made the white men drivers as the Indians had driven before. Civilisation demands repose, safety. And until repose and safety came we could do no effective work for the Indian. We of to-day have lived the longest lives, for we have seen a continent transformed.
We have forgotten that a hundred years ago Briton and Spaniard and Frenchman were hammering at our gates; forgotten that the Indian beleaguered our wooden castles; forgotten that wolves drummed with their paws on our cabin doors, snapping their teeth like steel traps, while the mother hushed the wheel within and children crouched beneath the floor.
O mothers of a mighty past, thy sons are with us yet, fighting new battles, planning new conquests, for law, order, and justice.
Where rolls the Columbia and where the snow-peaks of Hood, Adams, Jefferson, Rainier, and St. Helens look down, a metropolis has arisen in the very Multnomah where Clark took his last soundings. Northward, Seattle sits on her Puget sea, southward San Francisco smiles from her golden gate, Spanish no more. Over the route where Lewis and Clark toiled slowly a
