Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 179 



hunters; they were, in consequence, much more fe- 

 rocious and ready to attack man than at present. 

 The bear were the most numerous of all, after the 

 deer; their chase was a favorite sport. There was 

 just enough danger in it to make it exciting, for 

 though hunters were frequently bitten or clawed, 

 they were hardly ever killed. The wolves were 

 generally very wary ; yet in rare instances they, too, 

 were dangerous, The panther was a much more 

 dreaded foe, and lives were sometimes lost in hunt- 

 ing him ; but even with the panther, the cases where 

 the hunter was killed were very exceptional. 



The hunters were in their lives sometimes clean 

 and straight, and sometimes immoral, with a gross 

 and uncouth viciousness. We read of one party of 

 six men and a woman, who were encountered on the 

 Cumberland River; the woman acted as the wife of 

 a man named Big John, but deserted him for one 

 of his companions, and when he fell sick persuaded 

 the whole party to leave him in the wilderness to die 

 of disease and starvation. Yet those who left him 

 did not in the end fare better, for they were am- 

 bushed and cut off, when they had gone down to 

 Natchez, apparently by Indians. 



At first the hunters, with their small-bore rifles, 

 were unsuccessful in killing buffalo. Once, when 

 George Rogers Clark had long resided in Kentucky, 

 he and two companions discovered a camp of some 

 forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo 

 were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved 

 their necessities by killing fourteen of the great 



