r has existed since the days of Cortez to the present hour--
constantly shifting north or south, but ever extended from east to west,
from ocean to ocean, through wide degrees of longitude. North of this
border ranges the "Indio bravo;" south of it dwells his degenerate and
conquered kinsman, the "Indio manso"--not in the "tents," but in the
towns of his Spanish conqueror--the former, free as the prairie wind;
the latter, yoked to a condition of "peon" vassalage, with chains as
strong as those of slavery itself. The neutral belt of hostile ground
lies between--on the one side half defended by a line of garrisoned
forts (_presidios_); on the other, sheltered from attack by the wild and
waterless desert.

I have stated that this war-border has been constantly shifting either
northward or southward. Such was its history up to the beginning of the
present cycle. Since then, a remarkable change has been going forward
in the relative position of Indian and Iberian; and the line of hostile
ground has been moving only in one direction--continually _towards the
south_! To speak in less metaphorical phrase, the red man has been
encroaching upon the territory of the white man--the so-called savage
has been gaining ground upon the domain of civilisation. Not slowly or
gradually either, but by gigantic strides--by the conquest of whole
provinces as large as England ten times told!

I shall make the announcement of a fact, or rather a hypothesis--
scarcely well known, though strange enough. It may interest, if not
surprise, the ethnologist. I assert, then, that had the four tribes of
North Mexican Indians--Comanche, Lipano, Apache, and Navajo--been left
to themselves, _in less than another century they would have driven the
degenerate descendants of the conquerors of Cortez from the soil of
Anahuac_! I make this assertion with a full belief and clear conviction
of its truthfulness. The hypothesis rests upon a basis of realities.
It would require but very simple logic to prove it; but a few facts may
yield illustration.

With the fall of Spanish rule in Mexico, ended the predominance of the
Spaniard over the Indian. By revolution, the presidios became shorn of
their strength, and no longer offered a barrier even to the weakest
incursion. In fact, a neutral line no more exists; whole provinces--
Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Cinaloa, and Leon--are no better than
neutral ground, or, to speak more definitely, form an exten