The kind of colonizing conquest, whereby the people of the United States have extended their borders, has much in common with the similar movements in Canada and Australia, all of them, standing in sharp contrast to what has gone on in…

The way in which the southern part of our western country--that is, all the land south of the Ohio, and from thence on to the Rio Grande and the Pacific--was won and settled, stands quite alone.

The Southwest, including therein what was once called simply the West, and afterwards the Middle West, was won by the people themselves, acting as individuals, or as groups of individuals, who hewed out their own fortunes in advance of any…

On the other hand, the Northwest, speaking broadly, was acquired by the government, the settlers merely taking possession of what the whole country guaranteed them.

The Northwest is essentially a national domain; it is fitting that it should be, as it is, not only by position but by feeling, the heart of the nation.

The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners.

In obedience to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts, spurred ever onwards by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by so doing wrought out the destinies of a…

It was this that rendered the Revolution inevitable; the struggle was a revolt against the whole mental attitude of Britain in regard to America, rather than against any one special act or set of acts.

We gained it exactly as we afterwards gained Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Texas: partly by arms, partly by diplomacy, partly by the sheer growth and pressure of our spreading population.

Much has been written and sung of the advantages possessed by the mountaineer when striving in his own home against invaders from the plains; but these advantages are as nothing when weighed with those which make the warlike dweller in…

Moreover, no knight of the middle ages was so surely protected by his armor as they were by their skill in hiding; the whole forest was to the whites one vast ambush, and to them a sure and ever-present shield.

Every tree trunk was a breastwork ready prepared for battle; every bush, every moss-covered boulder, was a defence against assault, from behind which, themselves unseen, they watched with fierce derision the movements of their clumsy white…

Lurking, skulking, travelling with noiseless rapidity, they left a trail that only a master in woodcraft could follow, while, on the other hand, they could dog a white man's footsteps as a hound runs a fox.

Their silence, their cunning and stealth, their terrible prowess and merciless cruelty, makes it no figure of speech to call them the tigers of the human race.

Tireless, and careless of all hardship, they came silently out of unknown forests, robbed and murdered, and then disappeared again into the fathomless depths of the woods.

Half of the terror they caused was due to the extreme difficulty of following them, and the absolute impossibility of forecasting their attacks.

Without warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses, the horror they caused being heightened no less by the mystery that shrouded them than by the dreadful nature of their…

They were trained to the use of arms from their youth up, and war and hunting were their two chief occupations, the business as well as the pleasure of their lives.

For the hideous, unnamable, unthinkable tortures practised by the red men on their captured foes, and on their foes' tender women and helpless children, were such as we read of in no other struggle, hardly even in the revolting pages that…

It was inevitable--indeed it was in many instances proper--that such deeds should awake in the breasts of the whites the grimmest, wildest spirit of revenge and hatred.

It could not be otherwise when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, despising all men not of their own color, were thrown in contact with savages who esteemed cruelty and treachery as the highest of virtues, and rapine and murder as the…

Mere outrages could be atoned for or settled; the question which lay at the root of our difficulties was that of the occupation of the land itself, and to this there could be no solution save war.

The white settler has merely moved into an uninhabited waste; he does not feel that he is committing a wrong, for he knows perfectly well that the land is really owned by no one.

The truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil; they had not half as good a claim to it, for instance, as the cattlemen now have to all eastern Montana, yet no one would assert that the cattlemen have a right to keep…

The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.