Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 41 



men or Spaniards ; we did not found them, but con- 

 quered them. All but the first two are in the South- 

 west, and of these two one was first taken and gov- 

 erned by Southwesterners. On the other hand, the 

 Northwestern cities, from Cincinnati and Chicago 

 to Helena and Portland, were founded by our own 

 people, by the people who now have possession of 

 them. 



The Southwest was conquered only after years of 

 hard fighting with the original owners. The way 

 in which this was done bears much less resemblance 

 to the sudden filling up of Australia and California 

 by the practically unopposed overflow from a teem- 

 ing and civilized mother country, than it does to 

 the original English lone quest of Britain itself. The 

 warlike borderers who thronged across the Alle- 

 ghanies, the restless and reckless hunters, the hard, 

 dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity 

 overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Span- 

 iards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years be- 

 fore, Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced 

 the Cymric and Gaelic Celts. They were led by no 

 one commander; they acted under orders from 

 neither king nor congress; they were not carrying 

 out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedi- 

 ence to the instincts working half blindly within 

 their breasts, spurred ever onward by the fierce de- 

 sires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilder- 

 ness homes for their children, and by so doing 

 wrought out the destinies of a continental nation. 

 They warred and settled from the high hill-valleys 



