148 The Winning of the West 



called peace were broken by forays and murders; a 

 man might grow from babyhood to middle age on 

 the border, and yet never remember a year in which 

 some one of his neighbors did not fall a victim to the 

 Indians. 



There was everywhere a rude military organiza- 

 tion, which included all the able-bodied men of the 

 community. Every settlement had its colonels and 

 captains ; but these officers, both in their training and 

 in the authority they exercised, corresponded much 

 more nearly to Indian chiefs than to the regular 

 army men whose titles they bore. They had no 

 means whatever of enforcing their orders, and their 

 tumultuous and disorderly levies of sinewy rifle- 

 men were hardly as well disciplined as the Indians 

 themselves. 47 The superior officer could advise, 



47 Brantz Mayer, in "Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and-Cresap" 

 (Albany, 1867), ix., speaks of the pioneers as "comparatively 

 few in numbers," and of the Indians as "numerous, and fear- 

 ing not only the superior weapons of his foe, but the organi- 

 zation and discipline which together made the comparatively 

 few equal to the greater number." This sentence embodies 

 a variety of popular misconceptions. The pioneers were more 

 numerous than the Indians; the Indians were generally, at 

 least in the Northwest, as well armed as the whites, and in 

 military matters the Indians were actually (see Smith's nar- 

 rative, and almost all competent authorities) superior in 

 organization and discipline to their pioneer foes. Most of 

 our battles against the Indians of the Western woods, 

 whether won or lost, were fought by superior numbers 

 on our side. Individually, or in small parties, the frontiers- 

 men gradually grew to be a match for the Indians, man for 

 man, at least in many cases, but this was only true of large 

 bodies of them if they were commanded by some one natu- 

 rally able to control their unruly spirits. 



