22 The Winning of the West 



Americans never abandoning claims which they had 

 not yet the power to enforce, and which their an- 

 tagonists declined to yield. Neither were the In- 

 dian wars settled ; on the contrary, they had become 

 steadily more serious, though for the first time a 

 definite solution was promised by the active inter- 

 ference of the National Government. But a vast 

 change had been made by the inflow of population; 

 and an even vaster by the growing solidarity of the 

 Western settlements with one another and with the 

 Central Government. The settlement of the North- 

 west, so different in some of its characteristics from 

 the settlement of the Southwest, had begun. Ken- 

 tucky was about to become a State of the Union. 

 The territories north and south of it were organized 

 as part of the domain of the United States. The 

 West was no longer a mere wilderness dotted with 

 cabins and hamlets, whose backwoods builders were 

 held by but the loosest tie of allegiance to any gov- 

 ernment, even their own. It had become an integral 

 part of the mighty American Republic. 



