Omaha daily bee., 1899-11-26
PASSING OF THE PLAINSMAN.

| RecolIections of Some Noted Path
makers of the Great West.
st. Louis Globe-Democrat.
| The death OF Colonel Henry Inman will re-
| call the fact that comparatively few are left
of those who, in a conspicuous may, formed
part Of the wild life of the country west of
the Mississippi. The conditions in the
pioneering days west of the great river diff
fered widely in some respects from those
| which prevailed between that watercourse
and the Alleghenies, and these conditions
begot or necessitated difference in the
qualities of the men who participated In
them. The horse figured more and the canoe,
pirogue and other sort of water conveyances
less between the Mississippi and the Pacific
than on the other side. Irving, in his Bon
NEVILLE" which was written when st. Louis
was frontier town, grasped this difference
when he said that tho life of the far west
had produced set OF men altogether dis
tinct from the pioneers, hunters, and trap
pers OF the older section OF the country.
The equestrian exercises, he remarked, in
which they Cthe men Of the far wesD are
engaged, the nature Of the country they
traverse, vast plains and mountains, pure
and exhilaratng atmosphere, seem to make
them physically and mentally more lively
and mercurial race than the frontiersmen
of former days, A man who bestrides a
horse must necessarily be essentially diff
ferent from a man who covers in a canoe"
Though the old free life In which these
men participated has passed away many Of
the men themselves were alive until recently,
and few OF them are living still. 1t is less
than twenty years ago since Jim Bridger
was a familiar figure in st. Louis. Kit Car
son, who died at a comparatively early age
for a plainsman who had a natural death,
has been gone less than a third of CEN
tury. shorter time than that has passed
since the demise in st. Louis OF Father De-
Smet, the Jesuit, who among the Indians Of
the far northwest and with the heroism
which characterized his order, met hardships
and perls as serious as those which beset
Brebouf, Lalemant, Jogues and the other
missionaries OF his faith two centuries earlier
among the Hurons and the Iroquois. There
are persons still alive on what was until re-
Gently the western frontier who saw Bent,
Vasquez st. Vrain, Sublette and Jim Beck
worth while Texas Jack, California Joe,
Wild Bill and scores of others who were
prominent in western life in their day de-
parted at only a comparatively recent time.
Persons are still living in st, Louis who saw
General William Clark. the partner Of Lewis
in the first expedition OF Anglo Americans
which crossed the continent to the Pacific,
and brother OF George Rogers Clark, who
won the northwest for the United States In
the revolution.
When, In 1854 the Chicago q Rock Island
line sent to the Mississippi river the first
train OF cars which ever reached that stream.
the forest life OF the older half OF the coun-
try closed for good. When, In 1869 at
Promontory Point, in Utah. the rails on the
two ends OF the Pacific railroads met. and
the locomotive crossed the continent, the
beginning OF the end came for the plainsmen
as a distinctive element OF the American