alley. The gas and oil deposits of the Ohio Valley,
the coal of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and eastern Kansas, the lead and
zinc of the Ozark region and of the upper Mississippi Valley, and the
gold of the black Hills,--all contribute underground wealth to the
Middle West.

The primeval American forest once spread its shade over vast portions
of the same province. Ohio, Indiana, southern Michigan, and central
Wisconsin were almost covered with a growth of noble deciduous trees. In
southern Illinois, along the broad bottom lands of the Mississippi and
the Illinois, and in southern and southwestern Missouri, similar forests
prevailed. To the north, in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, appeared
the somber white pine wilderness, interlaced with hard woods, which
swept in ample zone along the Great Lakes, till the deciduous forests
triumphed again, and, in their turn, faded into the treeless expanse of
the prairies. In the remaining portions were openings in the midst of
the forested area, and then the grassy ocean of prairie that rolled to
west and northwest, until it passed beyond the line of sufficient
rainfall for agriculture without irrigation, into the semi-arid
stretches of the Great Plains.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the forested region of this
province was occupied by the wigwams of many different tribes of the
Algonquin tongue, sparsely scattered in villages along the water
courses, warring and trading through the vast wilderness. The western
edge of the prairie and the Great Plains were held by the Sioux, chasing
herds of bison across these far-stretching expanses. These horsemen of
the plains and the canoemen of the Great Lakes and the Ohio were factors
with which civilization had to reckon, for they constituted important
portions of perhaps the fiercest native race with which the white man
has ever battled for new lands.

The Frenchman had done but little fighting for this region. He swore
brotherhood with its savages, traded with them, intermarried with them,
and explored the Middle West; but he left the wilderness much as he
found it. Some six or seven thousand French people in all, about Detroit
and Vincennes, and in the Illinois country, and scattered among the
Indian villages of the remote lakes and streams, held possession when
George Washington reached the site of Pittsburgh, bearing Virginia's
summons of eviction to France. In his person fate knocked at the portals
of a "rising empire.