Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 113 



man was a 1'aw unto himself, and good and bad alike 

 were left in perfect freedom to follow out to the 

 uttermost limits their own desires; for the spirit of 

 individualism so characteristic of American life 

 reached its extreme of development in the back- 

 woods. The whites who wished peace, the magis- 

 trates and leaders, had little more power over their 

 evil and unruly fellows than the Indian sachems had 

 over the turbulent young braves. Each man did 

 what seemed best in his own eyes, almost without 

 let or hindrance; unless, indeed, he trespassed upon 

 the rights of his neighbors, who were ready enough 

 to band together in their own defence, though slow 

 to interfere in the affairs of others. 



Thus the men of lawless, brutal spirit who are 

 found in every community and who flock to places 

 where the reign of order is lax, were able to follow 

 the bent of their inclinations unchecked. They ut- 

 terly despised the red man; they held it no crime 

 whatever to cheat him in trading, to rob him of his 

 peltries or horses, to murder him if the fit seized 

 them. Criminals who generally preyed on their own 

 neighbors, found it easier, and perhaps hardly as 

 dangerous, to pursue their calling at the expense of 

 the redskins, for the latter, when they discovered 

 that they had been wronged, were quite as apt to vent 

 their wrath on some outsider as on the original of- 

 fender. *Li they injured a white, all the whites 

 might make common cause against them; but if 

 they injured a red man, though there was sure to be 

 plenty of whites who disapproved of it, there were 



