The War in the Northwest 197 



ished the victims of wanton aggression. They them- 

 selves had seen innumerable instances of Indian 

 treachery. They had often known the chiefs of 

 a tribe to profess warm friendship at the very mo- 

 ment that their young men were stealing and mur- 

 dering. They grew to think of even the most peace- 

 ful Indians as merely sleeping wild beasts, and while 

 their own wrongs were ever vividly before them, 

 they rarely heard of or heeded those done to their 

 foes. In a community where every strong cour- 

 ageous man was a bulwark to the rest, he was sure 

 to be censured lightly for merely killing a member 

 of a loathed and hated race. 



Many of the best of the backwoodsmen were 

 Bible-readers, but they were brought up in a creed 

 that made much of the Old Testament, and laid 

 slight stress on pity, truth, or mercy. They looked 

 at their foes as the Hebrew prophets looked at the 

 enemies of Israel. What were the abominations 

 because of which the Canaanites were destroyed 

 before Joshua, when compared with the abomina- 

 tions of the red savages whose lands they, another 

 chosen people, should in their turn inherit? They 

 believed that the Lord was king for ever and ever, 

 and they believed no less that they were but obey- 

 ing His commandment as they strove mightily to 

 bring about the day when the heathen should have 

 perished out of the land ; for they had read in The 

 Book that he was accursed who did the work of 

 the Lord deceitfully, or kept his sword back from 

 blood. There was many a stern frontier zealot who 



