Two maps of Texas will be found in the envelope at the back of the pamphlet. The smaller is a reproduction of one published in 1856, not too accurate from a geographic standpoint, but as accurate as the knowledge of the times allowed. The other map, accurate from the geographic point of view, endeavors to show the locations of some thirty-four forts and camps that were established and built by our War Department on the Texas Frontier during the Indian days.

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that brought to a close the war between the United States and Mexico, February 2, 1848, and the subsequent Gadsden Purchase of 1853, set the plan for the present boundaries between the two countries. A vast area of plains, deserts and mountains, an unmapped and untraveled wilderness was now owned by the Northern Republic. It was inhabited mostly by Comanche, Apache, Kiowa and other warlike Indian tribes, and it stretched from the settlements of South and East Texas, and from the lower Missouri River area to the new American settlements on the Pacific Coast.

Great events were in the making when in California in 1848, gold nuggets were found in the tailrace of Sutter’s Mill. The word passed around quickly, and the first modern international gold rush was on. It put the first sizeable amounts of precious metals into the coffers of the nations of the world since the Spanish Conquistadores ransacked the treasure houses of Peru and Mexico. It brought about modern mining practices, and before the end of the century, the search for gold was so international and intense that comparable strikes had been made in South Africa, Australia, Canada and Alaska, resulting in fresh redistribution of populations, not only in the United States