Excerpt from Wild Life on the Plains and Horrors of Indian Warfare, by a Corps of Competent Authors and Artists: Being a Complete History of Indian Life, Warfare and Adventure in America, Making Specially Prominent the Late Indian War, With Full Descriptions of the Messiah Craze, Ghost Dance, Life of Sitting Bull

It is but a few years ago that every schoolboy, supposed to possess the rudi ments of a knowledge of the geography of the United States, could give the boundaries and a general description of the Great American Desert. As to the boundary the knowledge seemed to be quite explicit: on the north bounded by the Upper Missouri, on the east by the Lower Missouri and Mississippi, on the south by Texas, and on the west by the Rocky Mountains. The boundaries on the northwest and south remained undisturbed, while on the east civiliza tion, propelled and directed by Yankee enterprise, adopted the motto, West, ward the star of empire takes its way. Countless throngs Of emigrants crossed the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, selecting homes in the rich and fertile territories lying beyond. Each year this tide of emigration, strength ened and increased by the ¿ow from foreign shores, advanced toward the set ting sun, slowly but surely narrowing the preconceived limits of the Great American Desert, and correspondingly enlarging the limits of civilization. At last the geographical myth was dispelled. It was gradually discerned that the Great American Desert did not exist, that it had no abiding place, but that within its supposed limits, and instead of what had been regarded as a sterile and unfruitful tract of land, incapable of sustaining either man or beast, there existed the fairest and richest portion of the national domain, blessed with a climate pure, bracing, and healthful, while its undeveloped soil rivalled if it did not surpass the most productive portions of the Eastern, Middle, or Southern States.

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