37 6 The Winning of the West 



the same way they failed to show themselves a match 

 for the white hunters of the great plains when on 

 equal terms. But their marvelous faculty for taking 

 advantage of cover, and for fighting in concert when 

 under cover, has always made the warlike tribes 

 foes to be dreaded beyond all others when in the 

 woods, or among wild broken mountains. 



The history of our warfare with the Indians dur 

 ing the century following the close of the Revolu 

 tion is marked by curiously sharp contrasts in the 

 efficiency shown by the regular troops in campaigns 

 carried on at different times and under varying con 

 ditions. These contrasts are due much more to the 

 difference in the conditions under which the cam 

 paigns were waged than to the difference in the 

 bodily prowess of the Indians. When we had been 

 in existence as a nation for a century the Modocs 

 in their lava-beds and the Apaches amid their water 

 less mountains were still waging against the regu 

 lars of the day the same tedious and dangerous war 

 fare waged against Harmar and St. Clair by the 

 forest Indians. There were the same weary, long- 

 continued campaigns ; the same difficulty in bringing 

 the savages to battle ; the same blind fighting against 

 hidden antagonists shielded by the peculiar nature of 

 their fastnesses; and, finally, the same great dis 

 parity of loss against the white troops. During the 

 intervening hundred years there had been many sim 

 ilar struggles ; as, for instance, that against the Sem- 

 inoles. Yet there had also been many struggles, 

 against Indians naturally more formidable, in which 



