The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 137 



Pathan, of Malay, Negro., and Polynesian. In 

 many a war they have overcome every European 

 rival against whom they have been pitted. Again 

 and again they have marched to victory against 

 Frenchman and Spaniard through the sweltering 

 heat of the tropics; and now, from the stupendous 

 mountain masses of mid Asia, they look north 

 ward through the wintry air, ready to bar the 

 advance of the legions of the Czar. Hitherto they 

 have never gone back save once; they have failed 

 only when they sought to stop the westward march 

 of a mighty nation, a nation kin to theirs, a nation 

 of their own tongue and law, and mainly of their 

 own blood. 



The British officers and the American border 

 leaders found themselves face to face in the wilder 

 ness as rivals of one another. Sundered by in 

 terest and ambition, by education and habits of 

 thought, trained to widely different ways of look 

 ing at life, and with the memories of the hostile 

 past fresh in their minds, they were in no humor to 

 do justice to one another. Each side regarded the 

 other with jealousy and dislike, and often with 

 bitter hatred. Each often unwisely scorned the 

 other. Each kept green in mind the wrongs suf 

 fered at the other's hands, and remembered every 

 discreditable fact in the other's recent history 

 every failure, every act of cruelty or stupidity, every 

 deed that could be held as the consequence of the 

 worst moral and mental shortcomings. Neither 

 could appreciate the other's many and real virtues. 



