150 The Winning of the West 



than the Indians, and also stood punishment better, 

 but they never matched them in surprises nor in 

 skill in taking advantage of cover, and very rarely 

 equaled their discipline in the battle itself. After 

 all, the pioneer was primarily a husbandman; the 

 time spent in chopping trees and tilling the soil his 

 foe spent in preparing for or practicing forest war- 

 fare, and so the former, thanks to the exercise of the 

 very qualities which in the end gave him the posses- 

 sion of the soil, could not, as a rule, hope to rival his 

 antagonist in the actual conflict itself. When large 

 bodies of the red men and white borderers were 

 pitted against each other, the former were if any- 

 thing the more likely to have the advantage. 50 But 

 the whites soon copied from the Indians their system 

 of individual and private warfare, and they probably 

 caused their foes far more damage and loss in this 

 way than in the large expeditions. Many noted 

 border scouts and Indian fighters such men as 

 Boone, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mans- 

 ker 51 grew to overmatch their Indian foes at their 



50 At the best such a frontier levy was composed of men 

 of the type of Leatherstocking, Ishmael Bush, Tom Hunter, 

 Harry March, Bill Kirby, and Aaron Thousandacres. When 

 animated by a common and overmastering passion, such a 

 body would be almost irresistible ; but it could not hold to- 

 gether long, and there was generally a plentiful mixture 

 of men less trained in woodcraft, and therefore useless in 

 forest fighting, while if, as must generally be the case in any 

 body, there were a number of cowards in the ranks, the total 

 lack of discipline not only permitted them to flinch from 

 their work with impunity, but also allowed them, by their 

 example, to 1 'nfect and demoralize their braver companions. 



51 Haywood, De Haas, Withers, McClung, and other border 



