The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 



often more important in their ultimate results. 

 Under the incessant strain of the incessant warfare 

 there arose here and there Indian fighters of special 

 note, men who warred alone, or at the head of small 

 parties of rangers, and who not only defended the 

 settlements, but kept the Indian villages and the 

 Indian war parties in constant dread by their venge 

 ful retaliatory inroads. These men became the pe 

 culiar heroes of the frontier, and their names were 

 household words in the log cabins of the children, 

 and children's children, of their contemporaries. 

 They were warriors of the type of the rude cham 

 pions who in the ages long past hunted the mammoth 

 and the aurochs, and smote one another with stone- 

 headed axes ; their feats of ferocious personal prow 

 ess were of the kind that gave honor and glory to 

 the mighty men of the time primeval. Their deeds 

 were not put into books while the men themselves 

 lived ; they were handed down by tradition, and grew 

 dim and vague in the recital. What one fierce par 

 tisan leader had done might dwindle or might grow 

 in the telling or might finally be ascribed to some 

 other; or else the same feat was twisted into such 

 varying shapes that it became impossible to recog 

 nize which was nearest the truth, or what man had 

 performed it. 



Often in dealing with the adventures of one of 

 these old-time border warriors Kenton, Wetzel, 

 Brady, Mansker, Castleman, all we can say is 

 that some given feat was commonly attributed to 

 him, but may have been performed by somebody 



