In the Current of the Revolution 309 



the restless and vigorous frontiersmen would ul- 

 timately have won their way into the coveted West- 

 ern lands; yet had it not been for the battle of the 

 Great Kanawha, Boone and Henderson could not, 

 in 1775, have planted their colony in Kentucky; 

 and had it not been for Boone and Henderson, it 

 is most unlikely that the land would have been set- 

 tled at all until after the Revolutionary War, when 

 perhaps it might have been British soil. Boone 

 was essentially a type, and possesses his greatest 

 interest for us because he represents so well the 

 characteristics as well as the life-work of his fellow 

 backwoodsmen ; still, it is unfair not to bear in mind 

 also the leading part he played and the great services 

 he rendered to the nation. 



The incomers soon recovered from the fright into 

 which they had been thrown by the totally unex- 

 pected Indian attack; but the revengeful anger it 

 excited in their breasts did not pass. away. They 

 came from a class already imbittered by long war- 

 fare with their forest foes; they hoarded up 

 their new wrongs in minds burdened with the 

 memories of countless other outrages; and it is 

 small wonder that repeated and often unprovoked 

 treachery at last excited in them a fierce and indis- 

 criminate hostility to all the red-skinned race. They 

 had come to settle on ground to which, as far as 

 it was possible, the Indian title had been by fair 

 treaty extinguished. They ousted no Indians from 

 the lands they took ; they had had neither the chance 

 nor the wish themselves to do wrong; in their eyes 



