362 The Winning of the West 



No better material for founding a new State ex 

 isted anywhere. With such a foundation the State 

 was little likely to plunge into the perilous abysses 

 of anarchic license or of separatism and disunion. 

 Moreover, to plant a settlement of this kind on the 

 edge of the Indian-haunted wilderness showed that 

 the founders possessed both hardihood and resolu 

 tion. 



Yet it must not be forgotten that the daring 

 needed for the performance of this particular deed 

 can in no way be compared with that shown by the 

 real pioneers, the early explorers and Indian fight 

 ers. The very fact that the settlement around Mari 

 etta was national in its character, that it was the 

 outcome of national legislation, and was undertaken 

 under national protection, made the work of the in 

 dividual settler count for less in the scale. The 

 founders and managers of the Ohio Company and 

 the statesman of the Federal Congress deserve much 

 of the praise that in the Southwest would have fallen 

 to the individual settlers only. The credit to be 

 given to the nation in its collective capacity was 

 greatly increased, and that due to the individual was 

 correspondingly diminished. 



Rufus Putnam and his fellow New Englanders 

 built their new town under the guns of a Federal 

 fort, only just beyond the existing boundary of set 

 tlement, and on land guaranteed them by the Fed 

 eral Government. The dangers they ran and the 

 hardships they suffered in no wise approached those 

 undergone and overcome by the iron-willed, iron- 



