The American Wilderness. 7 



advance fled the warrior tribes of the red men and the 

 scarcely less intractable array of white Indian fighters 

 and game hunters. When the Revolutionary war was at 

 its height, George Rogers Clarke, himself a mighty hun- 

 ter of the old backwoods type, led his handful of hunter- 

 soldiers to the conquest of the French towns of the Illi- 

 nois. This was but one of the many notable feats of 

 arms performed by the wild soldiery of the backwoods. 

 Clad in their fringed and tasselled hunting shirts of buck- 

 skin or homespun, with coonskin caps and deer-hide leg- 

 gings and moccasins, with tomahawk and scalping knife 

 thrust into their bead-worked belts, and long rifles in 

 hand, they fought battle after battle of the most bloody 

 character, both against the Indians, as at the Great 

 Kanawha, at the Fallen Timbers, and at Tippecanoe, and 

 against more civilized foes, as at King's Mountain, New 

 Orleans, and the River Thames. 



Soon after the beginning of the present century- 

 Louisiana fell into our hands, and the most daring hun- 

 ters and explorers pushed through the forests of the Mis- 

 sissippi valley to the great plains, steered across these 

 vast seas of grass to the Rocky Mountains, and then 

 through their rugged defiles onwards to the Pacific Ocean. 

 In every work of exploration, and in all the earlier battles 

 with the original lords of the western and southwestern 

 lands, whether Indian or Mexican, the adventurous hun- 

 ters played the leading part ; while close behind came the 

 swarm of hard, dogged, border-farmers, a masterful race, 

 good fighters and good breeders, as all masterful races 

 must be. 



