Every year, owing to the disappearance of the buffalo from their former haunts, the Indians are compelled to encroach upon each other's hunting-grounds, which is a fruitful cause of war between the different tribes. It is a curious fact that the buffalo retire before the whites, whilst the presence of Indians in their pastures appears in no degree to disturb them. Wherever a few white hunters are congregated in a trading post, or elsewhere, so sure is it that, if they remain in the same locality, the buffalo will desert the vicinity, and seek pasture elsewhere. In this, the Indians affirm, the wahkeitcha, or "bad medicine," of the pale-faces is very apparent; and they ground upon it their well-founded complaints of the encroachments made upon their hunting-grounds by the white hunters. In the winter, many of the tribes are reduced to the very verge of starvation--the buffalo having passed from their country into that of their enemies; when no other alternative is offered them but to remain where they are and starve, or to follow the game into a hostile region--a move entailing war and all its horrors. Reckless, moreover, of the future, in order to prepare robes for the traders, and to procure the pernicious fire-water, they wantonly slaughter, every year, vast numbers of buffalo cows (the skins of which sex only are dressed), and thus add to the evils in store for them. When questioned on this subject, and reproached with such want of foresight, they answer, that however quickly the buffalo disappears, the Red Man "goes under" more quickly still; and that the Great Spirit has ordained that both shall be "rubbed out" from the face of nature at one and the same time,--"that arrows and bullets are not more fatal to the buffalo than the small-pox and fire-water to them, and that before many winters' snows have disappeared, the buffalo and the Red Man will only be remembered by their bones, which will strew the plains." "They look forward, however, to a future state, when, after a long journey, they will reach the happy hunting-grounds, where buffalo will once more blacken the prairies; where the pale-faces dare not come to disturb them; where no winter snows cover the ground, and the buffalo ar'e always plentiful and fat."