The Winning of the. West 



wilderness. The brutal and lawless wickedness of 

 these men, whose uncouth and raw savagery was 

 almost more repulsive than that of city criminals, 

 made it imperative upon the decent members of the 

 community to unite for self-protection. The des- 

 peradoes were often mere human beasts of prey; 

 they plundered whites and Indians impartially. 

 They not only by their thefts and murders exas- 

 perated the Indians into retaliating on innocent 

 whites, but, on the other hand, they also often de- 

 serted their own color and went to live among the 

 redskins, becoming their leaders in the worst out- 

 rages. 14 



But the bulk of the settlers were men of sterling 

 worth ; fit to be the pioneer fathers of a mighty and 

 beautiful state. They possessed the courage that 

 enabled them to defy outside foes, together with the 

 rough, practical common-sense that allowed them to 

 establish a simple but effective form of government, 

 so as to preserve order among themselves. To suc- 



14 In Collins, II., 345, is an account of what may be termed 

 a type family of these frontier barbarians. They were named 

 Harpe.; and there is something revoltingly bestial in the 

 record of their crimes ; of how they traveled through the 

 country, the elder brother, Micajah Harpe, with two wives, 

 the younger with only one ; of the appalling number of mur- 

 ders they committed, for even small sums of money ; of their 

 unnatural proposal to kill all their children, so that they 

 should not be hampered in their flight ; of their life in the 

 woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble ferocity of their 

 ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the account of how 

 they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the 

 borderers showed to massacre the women and children as 

 well as the men. 



