INDIAN RAIDS ON WHITE SETTLERS. 215 



fortress. Nothing passed unnoticed by their keen eyes, 

 as they moved through its shadows; and an Indian 

 could no more get lost in its trackless depths than a 

 Londoner could in his maze of streets; while to the 

 whites the forest was one vast ambush from which at 

 any moment Indian war parties were liable to issue 

 forth to attack and destroy. 



There was usually no " declaration of war, " but 

 Indian raids were very generally heralded by the com- 

 mission of isolated outrages upon single individuals, 

 and a marked increase in the arrogant demeanour 

 among the neighbouring tribes. In dealings with 

 Orientals and other native races these symptoms are, 

 as we have already remarked, the almost certain 

 indication of serious impending trouble, which if not 

 at once met with firmness, and a display offeree, the 

 next thing generally is a tribal war and in America 

 this usually meant a descent by large bodies of Indians 

 upon the scattered settlements, which were ravaged with 

 fire and the tomahawk. Such raids generally came as 

 a " bolt out of the blue, " Mr. Roosevelt gives a good 

 description of one of these scenes: 



" Without warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt 

 the death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses ; 

 the horror caused being heightened no less by the mystery 

 that shrouded them, than by the dreadful nature of their ravages. 

 Wrapped in the mantle of the unknown; appalling by their 

 craft, their ferocity, and cruelty, they seemed to the white 

 settlers, devils, not men. No one could say with certainty 

 whence they came, nor of what tribe they were; and when 

 they had finished their dreadful work they retired into the 

 wilderness, that closed over their trail as the waves of the 

 ocean close in the w r ake of a ship." * 



* The Winning of the West, by Theodore Roosevelt, 1889, Vol. i, p. 82. 



