reserves guaranteed to them by the late treaties.' At this moment the agents continue to make new treaties, by which the Government proposes to purchase the lands of the Osages, Potawatomies and several other tribes.
Since the discovery of America the system of removing and of exiling the Indians farther inland or in the interior, has been assiduously exercised by the whites in this portion of the continent. In the early times, they went by slow degrees; but as the European colonies multiplied and increased
in power, the system has been pushed with more vigor. At
present, this same policy marches with gigantic steps. Resistance on the part of the natives could but hasten their ruin. The drama of population reaches its last scene at the east and west bases of the Rocky Mountains. In a few years the curtain will fall over the Indian tribes and veil
them forever. They will live only in history. The whites continue to spread like a torrent over California, over Washington, Utah and Oregon; over the States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas and New Mexico; and lastly, over Kansas and Nebraska.'
Within a recent period, and since I have resided in America, all these States and these Territories were still the exclusive domain of the Indians. As the whites settle and multiply in them, the Indians disappear and seem to die out. The immense regions that I have just named include several millions of square miles.
7 To this point the answers to the foregoing questions and the comments thereon are taken literally from letters dated February 16, 1852, and October 28, 1854, written by John Haverty of St. Louis, to whom Father De Smet had submitted the questions for an expression of opinion.
S On the 1st of August, 1854, in the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, there was not a town or village of whites. On the 3oth of December, of the same year, thirty or forty sites had been chosen for building villages and towns without delay. Labor was begun at many points; houses are building, farms laid out. All is life and activity in these virgin territories. Author's Note.