Upon the platform were seated ex-Governor C. C. Carpenter and Hon. R. A. Smith, members of the relief expedition; Mrs. I. A. Thomas, Rev. Valentine C. Thomas, and Jareb Palmer, who fortunately escaped the massacre at Springfield; Judge Charles E. Flandrau, the Indian agent who made possible the project to rescue Abbie Gardner, and Chetanmaza, the Siouan Indian whose intrepidity secured her release; Mrs. Abbie Gardner Sharp a survivor of the massacre at Okoboji; and various State officials. The memorial was presented to the State by ex-Governor C. C. Carpenter upon behalf of the commission under whose direction it had been erected, and was accepted for the State by Lieutenant Governor Warren S. Dungan and Hon. W. S. Richards. Thus the people of Iowa, through their law-making body, paid a fitting though somewhat tardy tribute to the memory of the pioneers who, imbued with the true American spirit of progress, were willing to brave the hardships of the frontier that those who came later might share the blessings of a richer civilization. In the words of one of the speakers of the occasion, “Let us hope that this awakening is not ephemeral or temporary.... The story told by this memorial shaft is but a faint expression of the toils endured, the dangers braved and the sacrifices made by the unfortunate victims whose remains lie buried here”.[357] The memorial “not only commemorates the great tragedy which crimsoned the waters of these lakes, but it will keep alive the memory of a species of American character which will soon become extinct. As we look away to the west, we are impressed that there is no longer an American frontier; and when the frontier shall have faded away, the pioneer will live only in history, and in the monuments which will preserve his memory.”[358] XXXI CHANGES OF SIXTY YEARS When one looks back over the sixty years that have elapsed since Ma-za-ku-ta-ma-ni delivered his bitter invective against white infidelity at the Upper Agency on the Yellow Medicine, one can only wonder at the transformation which has been wrought in what was popularly known east of the Alleghenies as the Great American Desert. In sixty years the frontier has moved steadily westward until to-day it is gone not alone from the Mississippi Valley but from the American continent. What was a vast expanse of prairie in 1857 has become a country of prosperous homes.