He himself as an Army officer looked at the matter philosophically, but his estimate of conditions was exact.

Long ago as he wrote, his conclusions were such as might have been given forty years later.
"The limits of their accustomed range are rapidly contracting, and their means of subsistence undergoing a corresponding diminution.

The white man is advancing with rapid strides upon all sides of them, and they are forced to give way to his encroachments.

The time is not far distant when the buffalo will become extinct, and they will then be compelled to adopt some other mode of life than the chase for a subsistence....

No man will quietly submit to starvation when food is within his reach, and if he cannot obtain it honestly he will steal it or take it by force.