140 The Winning of the West 



difficulty in dealing an effective counter stroke. 

 The immense tangled forest increased beyond 

 measure the difficulties of the problem. Under their 

 shelter the Indians were able to attack at will and 

 without warning, and though they would fight to 

 the death against any odds when cornered, they in 

 variably strove to make their attacks on the most 

 helpless, on those who were powerless to resist. 

 It was not the armed frontier levies, it was the im 

 migrants coming in by pack train or by flatboat, 

 it was the unsuspecting settlers with their wives and 

 little ones who had most to fear from an Indian 

 fray; while, when once the blow was delivered, the 

 savages vanished as smoke vanishes in the open. A 

 small war party could thus work untold harm in a 

 district precisely as a couple of man-eating jaguars 

 may depopulate a forest village in tropical America ; 

 and many men and much time had to be spent before 

 they could be beaten into submission, exactly as it 

 needs a great hunting party to drive from their 

 fastness and slay the big man-eating cats, though, 

 if they came to bay in the open, they could readily be 

 killed by a single skilful and resolute hunter. 



Each settlement or group of settlements had to 

 rely on the prowess of its own hunter-soldiers for 

 safety. The real war, the war in which by far the 

 greatest loss was suffered by both sides, was that 

 thus waged, man against man. These innumerable 

 and infinitely varied skirmishes, as petty as they 

 were bloody, were not so decisive at the moment as 

 the campaigns against the gathered tribes, but were 



