St. Clair and Wayne 39 



possible. The Secretary of War, who knew noth- 

 ing of Indians by actual contact, wrote that it 

 would be indeed pleasing "to a philosophic mind to 

 reflect that, instead of exterminating a part of the 

 human race by our modes of population ... we 

 had imparted our knowledge of cultivation and the 

 arts to the aboriginals of the country," thus pre- 

 serving and civilizing them; 9 and the public men 

 who represented districts remote from the frontier 

 shared these views of large, though vague, benefi- 

 cence. But neither the white frontiersmen nor their 

 red antagonists possessed "philosophic minds." 

 They represented two stages of progress, ages apart ; 

 and it would have needed many centuries to bring 

 the lower to the level of the higher. Both sides rec- 

 ognized the fact that their interests were incompati- 

 ble ; and that the question of their clashing rights 

 had to be settled by the strong hand. 



In the Northwest matters culminated sooner than 

 in the Southwest. The Georgians, and the settlers 

 along the Tennessee and Cumberland, were harassed 

 rather than seriously menaced by the Creek war 

 parties; but in the North the more dangerous In- 

 dians of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes 

 gathered in bodies so large as fairly to deserve the 

 name of armies. Moreover, the pressure of the white 

 advance was far heavier in the North. The pioneers 

 who settled in the Ohio basin were many times as 

 numerous as those who settled on the lands west 



9 American State Papers, Vol. IV, pp. 53, 57, 60, 77, 79, 81, 

 etc. 



