The men who settle in a new country, and begin subduing the wilderness, plunge back into the very conditions from which the race has raised itself by the slow toil of ages.

As with harsh and dangerous labor they bring the new land up towards the level of the old, they themselves partly revert to their ancestral conditions; they sink back towards the state of their ages-dead barbarian forefathers.

Few observers can see beyond this temporary retrogression into the future for which it is a preparation.

Yet it was these Western frontiersmen who were the real and vital factors in the solution of the problems which so annoyed the British Monarchy and the American Republic.

They eagerly craved the Indian lands; they would not be denied entrance to the thinly-peopled territory wherein they intended to make homes for themselves and their children.

Rough, masterful, lawless, they were neither daunted by the prowess of the red warriors whose wrath they braved, nor awed by the displeasure of the Government whose solemn engagements they violated.

He utterly failed to grasp the central features of the situation, which were that the settlers needed the land, and were bound to have it, within a few years; and that the Indians would not give it up, under no matter what treaty, without…

The Franklin men made war and peace with the Cherokees just as they chose, and utterly refused to be bound by the treaties concluded on behalf of the United States.

With savages so treacherous and so ferocious it was a mere impossibility for the borderers to distinguish the hostile from the friendly, as they hit out blindly to revenge the blows that fell upon them from unknown hands.

They preferred to see the savages at peace with the Americans, provided that in this way they could keep their lands; but, whether through peace or war, they wished the lands to remain Indian, and the Americans to be barred from them.

Peace could only be won by the unsheathed sword.

Only a severe stroke, delivered by a formidable army, could cow the tribes.

Men of good bodily powers, and in the prime of life, and especially men able to do the rough work of frontier farmers, could not be hired to fight Indians in unknown forests for two dollars a month.

Under such conditions it did not need keen vision to foretell disaster.

No words can paint the hopelessness and horror such a struggle as that in which they were engaged.

They were hemmed in by foes who showed no mercy and whose blows they could in no way return.

If they charged they could not overtake the Indians; and the instant the charge stopped the Indians came back.

If they stood they were shot down by an unseen enemy; and there was no stronghold, no refuge to which to flee.

The Indian attack was relentless, and could neither be avoided, parried, nor met by counter assault.

It was only after every other shift had been vainly tried that resort was had to the edge of the sword.

The United States would gladly have made a stable peace on honorable terms, and strove with weary patience to bring about a friendly understanding.

But all such efforts were rendered abortive partly by the treachery and truculence of the savages, who could only be cowed by a thorough beating, and partly by the desire of the settlers for lands which the red men claimed as their hunting…

The truculent violence and bad faith of the savages merited severe chastisement; but the United States Government was long-suffering and of the forbearing to a degree.

Wayne had shown himself the best general ever sent to war with the Northwestern Indians; and his victorious campaign was the most noteworthy ever carried on against them, for it brought about the first lasting peace on the border, and put…

Americans need to keep in mind the fact that as a nation they have erred far more often in not being willing enough to fight than in being too willing.