In the execution of this purpose I remark that my military service commenced in Wisconsin when there was not a cultivated farm throughout the entire area of that large and preeminently attractive agricultural territory. Neither was there a road leading from my station at Green Bay in any direction, so that the only practicable method of penetrating the adjacent forests was by following crooked and narrow Indian trails. Indeed, the whole country west of Lake Michigan, as far south as Milwaukee, was at that time a vast primeval forest, without a wagon trace, clearing, or house, and the only respectable tenement at the incipient hamlet of Milwaukee was that of Solomon Juneau, a most genial and hospitable French Indian trader, who through preemption secured a patent to a quarter section of ground embracing the present site of that magnificent city.

The Western border settlements when I first reached Wisconsin did not extend beyond the Mississippi River. But from that time to the present a movable cordon of military posts has been kept up in advance of the outer pioneers, thereby interposing an effective barrier against the incursions of blood-thirsty savages, who have but recently ceased their barbarous efforts to obstruct the advance of civilization. And it is believed that without the protection thus afforded it would have been impossible to have forced our settlements much beyond the Mississippi River for many years to come.

In 1838 I visited Fort Snelling, only five miles from where the proud and beautiful cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis now stand, with a population of 100,000 each, and where there was not then a white human habitation.

Indeed, I saw but three cabins between Fort Snelling and Prairie du Chien, a distance of some three hundred miles along the Mississippi River, whereas numerous large and flourishing towns and highly cultivated plantations now skirt both banks of the river throughout the entire distance.

In 1848 I was ordered to the Indian Territory, where I served for several years among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee, numbering in the aggregate about 50,000 souls. They were at that time, through the benevolent efforts of missionaries, considerably advanced in civilization and enlightenment, having abandoned their hunting proclivities, and adopted agricultural avocations. They had churches and schools, which were well sustained, and many of them were fairly educated, living in comfortable houses, and produced abundant crops, and some of them cultivated large and remunerative cotton plantations.

The Choctaw and Chickasaw Reservations, united, are some 300 by 200 miles in extent, embodying woodlands and beautiful prairies, all well watered, and the soil eminently productive and admirably adapted to the requirements of the husbandman. While there in 1849 I was ordered to escort a large party of emigrants from Arkansas to New Mexico , en route to California. Our course, near the 35th parallel of latitude, led us for the first 200 miles through a heavily timbered forest, when we emerged into the Great Plains, and followed the Canadian River Valley for 400 miles over an unexplored, arid, and sterile region, and thence through a mountainous section, until we arrived at Santa Fe, 820 miles from the point of our departure at Fort Smith.