Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 115 



suffered. Every quiet, peaceable settler had either 

 himself been grievously wronged, or had been an 

 eye-witness to wrongs done to his friends ; and while 

 these were vivid in his mind, the corresponding 

 wrongs done the Indians were never brought home 

 to him at all. If his son was scalped or his cattle 

 driven off, he could not be expected to remember 

 that perhaps the Indians who did the deed had them- 

 selves been cheated by a white trader, or had lost 

 a relative at the hands of some border ruffian, or 

 felt aggrieved because a hundred miles off some set- 

 tler had built a cabin on lands they considered their 

 own. When he joined with other exasperated and 

 injured men to make a retaliatory inroad, his ven- 

 geance might or might not fall on the heads of the 

 real offenders; and, in any case, he was often not 

 in the frame of mind to put a stop to the outrages 

 sure to be committed by the brutal spirits among his 

 allies though these brutal spirits were probably in 

 a small minority. 



The excesses so often committed by the whites, 

 when, after many checks and failures, they at last 

 grasped victory, are causes for shame and regret; 

 yet it is only fair to keep in mind the terrible provo- 

 cations they had endured. Mercy, pity, magna- 

 nimity to the fallen, could not be expected from the 

 frontiersmen gathered together to war against an 

 Indian tribe. Almost every man of such a band 

 had bitter personal wrongs to avenge. He was 

 not taking part in a war against a civilized foe ; he 

 was fighting in a contest where women and children 



