n8 The Winning of the West 



Thus it is that there are so many dark and bloody 

 pages in the book of border warfare, that grim and 

 iron-bound volume, wherein we read how our fore- 

 fathers won the wide lands that we inherit. It 

 contains many a tale of fierce heroism and adven- 

 turous ambition, of the daring and resolute courage 

 of men and the patient endurance of women; it 

 shows us a stern race of freemen who toiled hard, 

 endured greatly, and fronted adversity bravely, who 

 prized strength and courage and good faith, whose 

 wives were chaste, who were generous and loyal to 

 their friends. But it shows us also how they spurned 

 at restraint and fretted under it, how they would 

 brook no wrong to themselves, and yet too often in- 

 flicted wrong on others ; their feats of terrible prow- 

 ess are interspersed with deeds of the foulest and 

 most wanton aggression, the darkest treachery, the 

 most revolting cruelty; and though we meet with 

 plenty of the rough, strong, coarse virtues, we see 

 but little of such qualities as mercy for the fallen, 

 the weak, and the helpless, or pity for a gallant and 

 vanquished foe. 



Among the Indians of the Northwest, generally 

 so much alike that we need pay little heed to tribal 

 distinctions, there was one body deserving especial 

 and separate mention. Among the turbulent and 

 jarring elements tossed into wild confusion by the 

 shock of the contact between savages and the rude 

 vanguard of civilization, surrounded and threatened 

 by the painted warriors of the woods no less than by 

 the lawless white riflemen who lived on the stump- 



