Some portions of it along the rivers may partially be subdued by
agriculture, others may form vast pastoral tracts, like those of the
East; but it is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless
interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the
ocean or the deserts of Arabia; and, like them, be subject to the
depredations of the marauder. Here may spring up new and mongrel races,
like new formations in geology, the amalgamation of the "debris" and
"abrasions" of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of broken
and almost extinguished tribes; the descendants of wandering hunters
and trappers; of fugitives from the Spanish and American frontiers; of
adventurers and desperadoes of every class and country, yearly ejected
from the bosom of society into the wilderness. We are contributing
incessantly to swell this singular and heterogeneous cloud of wild
population that is to hang about our frontier, by the transfer of whole
tribes from the east of the Mississippi to the great wastes of the
far West. Many of these bear with them the smart of real or fancied
injuries; many consider themselves expatriated beings, wrongfully exiled
from their hereditary homes, and the sepulchres of their fathers,
and cherish a deep and abiding animosity against the race that has
dispossessed them.
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