PART IV

NEW ADVERSITIES

Great Father, look over the prairie, when it is covered with grass and dotted with beautiful flowers of all colors, pleasant to the sight and the smell. Throw a burning torch into this vast prairie, and then look at it, and remember the life and happiness that reigned there before the fire. Then you will have an image of my nation.

—Little Walker, Mandan chief, to President Abraham Lincoln, 1864