The War in the Northwest 37 



gerous of all foes on their own ground, their ex 

 treme caution, and dislike of suffering punishment 

 prevented them from ever making really determined 

 efforts to carry a fort openly by storm; moreover, 

 these stockades were really very defensible against 

 men unprovided with artillery, and there is no rea 

 son for supposing that any troops could have carried 

 them by fair charging, without suffering altogether 

 disproportionate loss. The red tribes acted in rela 

 tion to the Cumberland settlements exactly as they 

 had previously done toward those on the Kentucky 

 and Watauga. They harassed the settlers from the 

 outset ; but they did not wake up to the necessity for 

 a formidable and combined campaign against them 

 until it was too late for such a campaign to succeed. 

 If, at the first, any one of these communities had 

 been forced to withstand the shock of such Indian 

 armies as were afterward brought against it, it 

 would, of necessity, have been abandoned. 



Throughout '81 and '82 the Cumberland settlers 

 were worried beyond description by a succession of 

 small war parties. In the first of these years they 

 raised no corn ; in the second they made a few crops 

 on fields they had cleared in 1780. No man's life 

 was safe for an hour, whether he hunted, looked 

 up strayed stock, went to the spring for water, or 

 tilled the fields. If two men were together, one al 

 ways watched while the other worked, ate, or drank ; 

 and they sat down back to back, or, if there were 

 several, in a ring, facing outward, like a covey of 

 quail. The Indians were especially fond of steal- 



