1 78 The Winning of the West 



most important of her possessions were in the New 

 World. For two centuries her European rivals, 

 English, French, and Dutch, had warred against her 

 in America, with the net result of taking from her 

 a few islands in the West Indies. On the American 

 mainland her possessions were even larger than they 

 had been in the age of the great Conquisadores ; 

 the age of Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto, and Coronado. 

 Yet it was evident that her grasp had grown feeble. 

 Every bold, lawless, ambitious leader among the 

 frontier folk dreamed of wresting from the Span 

 iard some portion of his rich and ill-guarded do 

 main. 



It was not alone the attitude of the frontiersmen 

 toward Spain that was novel, and based upon a sit 

 uation for which there was little precedent. Their 

 relations with one another, with their brethren of the 

 seaboard, and with the Federal Government like 

 wise had to be adjusted without much chance of 

 profiting by antecedent experience. Many phases 

 of these relations between the people who stayed at 

 home and those who wandered off to make homes, 

 between the frontiersmen as they formed young 

 States and the central government representing the 

 old States, were entirely new, and were ill-under 

 stood by both parties. Truths which all citizens 

 have now grown to accept as axiomatic were then 

 seen clearly only by the very greatest men, and by 

 most others were seen dimly, if at all. What is now 

 regarded as inevitable and proper was then held as 

 something abnormal, unnatural, and greatly to be 



