The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 107 



Though the relations of the officers of the regular 

 troops with the gentry were so pleasant there was 

 always much friction between them and the ordinary 

 frontiersmen; a friction which continued to exist 

 as long as the frontier itself, and which survives 

 to this day in the wilder parts of the country. The 

 regular army officer and the frontiersman are 

 trained in fashions so diametrically opposite that, 

 though the two men be brothers, they must yet 

 necessarily, in all their thoughts and instincts and 

 ways of looking at life, be as alien as if they be 

 longed to two different races of mankind. The bor 

 derer, rude, suspicious, and impatient of discipline, 

 looks with distrust and with a mixture of sneering 

 envy and of hostility upon the officer ; while the lat 

 ter, with his rigid training and his fixed ideals, 

 feels little sympathy for the other's good points, and 

 is contemptuously aware of his numerous failings. 

 The only link between the two is the scout, the man 

 who, though one of the frontiersmen, is accustomed 

 to act and fight in company with the soldiers. In 

 Kentucky, at the close of the Revolution, this link 

 was generally lacking; and there was no tie of ha 

 bitual', even th'ough half-hostile, intercourse to unite 

 the two parties. In consequence the ill-will often 

 showed itself by acts of violence. The backwoods 

 bullies were prone to browbeat and insult the officers 

 if they found them alone, trying to provoke them to 

 rough-and-tumble fighting; and in such a combat, 

 carried on with the revolting brutality necessarily 

 attendant upon a contest where gouging and biting 



