ST. CLAIR AND WAYNE 



CHAPTER I 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; OHIO 1787-1790 



SO far the work of the backwoodsmen in ex 

 ploring, conquering, and holding the West 

 had been work undertaken solely on individual ini 

 tiative. The nation as a whole had not directly 

 shared in it. The frontiersmen who chopped the 

 first trails across the Alleghanies, who earliest wan 

 dered through the lonely Western lands, and who 

 first built stockaded hamlets on the banks of the 

 Watauga, the Kentucky, and the Cumberland, acted 

 each in consequence of his own restless eagerness 

 for adventure and possible gain. The nation neither 

 encouraged them to undertake the enterprises on 

 which they embarked, nor protected them for the 

 first few years of uncertain foothold in the new- 

 won country. Only the backwoodsmen themselves 

 felt the thirst for exploration of the unknown, the 

 desire to try the untried, which drove them hither 

 and thither through the dim wilderness. The men 

 who controlled the immediate destinies of the con 

 federated commonwealths knew little of what lay 

 in the forest-shrouded country beyond the moun 

 tains, until the backwoods explorers of their own 



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