Notwithstanding an intermittent and desultory sort of warfare kept up between tribes of the same stock, as well as of different stocks, comparatively few were killed in this way before the European came. Night attacks were seldom made and in day attacks not many at one time were injured. The ordinary routine was one of peace. It is probable that in the American Civil War alone more men were killed than ever at one time in aboriginal days occupied the same area. Almost four thousand were destroyed at the battle of Shiloh, and in the battles of the Wilderness fully fifteen thousand. Even proportionately the wars of the "savages" were mere child's play compared to this. But when the white man crossed the Mississippi and began to encroach from the east and then from the west and one tribe was forced back upon another as the wind beats the combing waves upon a lee shore, matters began to change. A large infusion of inferior white blood aided this change. Then came the horse! It was a deficiency suddenly and completely supplied. The warrior on horseback was quite a different being from the one on foot. The boundless Plains were circumscribed. And the gun! Another void by this was so admirably filled that horse and gun and Amerind instantly merged into one; an indissoluble trio. Henceforth he supplied himself with an abundance of horses and with the best guns and ammunition he could get, till at the fearful moment on the Little Big Horn, he was better armed than the white soldiers sent to overpower him. It is exceedingly difficult always to view things dispassionately from our antagonist's standpoint, but when we succeed in doing so we invariably discover that he has some of the justice and virtue on his side. The Amerind seen in this way was not half as bad as he has been painted by his conqueror, who was prone to gloss over and forget his own shortcomings. [Illustration: South-western Baskets—Apache, Pima, etc. Navajo Blankets behind. Photograph by J. B. Lippincott, U. S. Geol. Survey.] [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [18] A substitute word, compounded of the first two syllables of American and the first syllable of Indian, adopted by some leading ethnologists. [19] I am not now taking theories into account. The theory that man has evolved from a lower organism seems to be correct. Here reference is made only to absolute facts. [20] The domestication of the buffalo by some tribe referred to by Gomara is not sufficiently definite to be accepted, and, furthermore, if true, could have been only a limited case. In Arizona there is some indication that an animal like the vicuna was used, but it is very vague. [21] For a list of stocks and sub-stocks, and of tribes, classified according to language, see _The North Americans of Yesterday_, by F. S. Dellenbaugh, Appendix, p. 461. By means of these lists the proper places of the majority of tribes can be readily found.