132 The Winning of the West 



However, the backwoodsmen as a class neither 

 built towns nor loved to dwell therein. They were 

 to be seen at their best in the vast, interminable 

 forests that formed their chosen home. They won 

 and kept their lands by force, and ever lived either 

 at war or in dread of war. Hence they settled al- 

 ways in groups of several families each, all banded 

 together for mutual protection. Their red. foes were 

 strong and terrible, cunning in council, dreadful in 

 battle, merciless beyond belief in victory. The men 

 of the border did not overcome and dispossess cow- 

 ards and weaklings ; they marched forth to spoil the 

 stout-hearted and to take for a prey the possessions 

 of the men of might. Every acre, every rood of 

 ground which they claimed had to be cleared by the 

 axe and held with the rifle. Not only was the chop- 

 ping down of the forests the first preliminary to 

 cultivation, but it was also the surest means of sub- 

 duing the Indians, to whom the unending stretches 

 of choked woodland were an impenetrable cover be- 

 hind which to move unseen, a shield in making as- 

 saults, and a strong tower of defence in repelling 

 counter-attacks. In the conquest of the West the 

 backwoods axe, shapely, well-poised, with long haft 

 and light head, was a servant hardly standing sec- 

 ond even to the rifle; the two were the national 

 weapons of the American backwoodsman, and in 

 their use he has never been excelled. 



When a group of families moved out into the 



with approval a sermon he heard as being "a very judicious 

 and alarming discourse." 



