266 The Winning of the West 



ing on their descendants, or on the mighty nation 

 which has sprung up and flourished in the soil they 

 first won and tilled. All that can be asked is that 

 they shall be judged as other wilderness conquerors, 

 as other slayers and quellers of savage peoples, are 

 judged. The same standards must be applied to 

 Sevier and his hard-faced horse-riflemen that we 

 apply to the Greek colonists of Sicily and the Roman 

 colonist of the valley of the Po; to the Cossack 

 rough-rider who won for Russia the vast and mel 

 ancholy Siberian steppes, and to the Boer who 

 guided his ox-drawn wagon-trains to the hot graz 

 ing lands of the Transvaal ; to the founders of Mas 

 sachusetts and Virginia, of Oregon and icy Sas 

 katchewan; and to the men who built up those 

 far-off commonwealths whose coasts are lapped 

 by the waters of the great South Sea. 



The aggressions by the Franklin men on the 

 Cherokee lands bore bloody fruit in i/Sd. 15 The 

 young warriors, growing ever more alarmed and 

 angered at the pressure of the settlers, could not be 

 restrained. They shook off the control of the old 

 men, who had seen the tribe flogged once and again 

 by the whites, and knew how hopeless such a strug 

 gle was. The Chickamauga banditti watched from 

 their eyries to pounce upon all boats that passed 

 down the Tennessee, and their war bands harried 

 the settlements far and wide, being joined in their 



14 State Dept. MSS., Vol. II, No. 71, Arthur Campbell to 

 Joseph Martin, June 16, 1786; Martin to the Governor of Vir 

 ginia, June 25, 1786, etc. 



