54 The Winning of the West 



traders. They became the guardians and allies of 

 all the Indian tribes. On the other hand, the 

 American backwoodsmen were resolute in their de 

 termination to go in and possess the land. The 

 aims of the two sides thus clashed hopelessly. 

 Under all temporary and apparent grounds of 

 quarrel lay this deep-rooted jealousy and incom 

 patibility of interests. Beyond the Alleghanies the 

 Revolution was fundamentally a struggle between 

 England, bent on restricting the growth of the 

 English race, and the Americans, triumphantly 

 determined to acquire the right to conquer the 

 continent. 



Had not the backwoodsmen been successful in 

 the various phases of the struggle, we would cer 

 tainly have been cooped up between the sea and 

 the mountains. If in 1774 and '76 they had been 

 beaten by the Ohio tribes and the Cherokees, the 

 border ravaged, and the settlements stopped or 

 forced back as during what the colonists called 

 Braddock's War, 5 there is every reason to believe 

 that the Alleghanies would have become our west 

 ern frontier. Similarly, if Clark had failed in his 

 efforts to conquer and hold the Illinois and Vin- 

 cennes, it is overwhelmingly probable that the Ohio 

 would have been the boundary between the Ameri 

 cans and the British. Before the Revolution began, 



8 During this Indian war, covering the period from Brad- 

 dock's to Grant's defeat, Smith, a good authority, estimates 

 that the frontiers were laid waste, and population driven 

 back, over an area nearly three hundred miles long by thirty 

 broad. 



