ly excited with a spirit of the most vindictive revenge, a thirst for human blood which can be satiated only by the indiscriminate destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

Man, in his primitive state, is by nature a savage, and in his wars knows no object except the extermination of his enemies in one form or another. When civilized man comes in collision with the savage, all the usages and maxims of civilization, calculated to ameliorate the horrors of war, are abandoned, and civilized man becomes in all these respects a savage in his mode of warfare, in his unrestrained passions, and in his cruel excesses. Too often, indeed, under the contagion of example, we find that civilized man degenerates into the most inhuman barbarian, not excelled by the most ruthless savage. Instances of this kind were of frequent occurrence during the war of the Revolution, exemplified in the persons of the "British Tories," who fought with the Indian allies against the defenseless frontier settlements.*

Nor can it be concealed that the American pioneer, smarting under the loss of friends and relatives murdered by the savages under every species of savage torture, burning with revenge for repeated incursions and murders upon the settlements, from which they had escaped with impunity, should sometimes wreak his vengeance, when occasion offered, with an unsparing * Instances of this kind were not uncommon during the Indian wars of the Revolu tion, when British Tories and Indians fought side by side against the Americans.

As a specimen of the inhumanity of a "British Tory," compared to that of the savage himself, we cite the following as one out of many others. "It occurred in the attack of the British Rangers, under Colonel Butler, and is given in Salmon's Narrative, and corroborated by several other authorities."

"A party of Indians in the British employ had entered a house, and killed and scalped a mother and a large family of children. This was at a spot on the west side of the Genesee River, where a small town called Leicester now stands. The Indians had just completed their work of death, when some Royalists belonging to their party came up and discovered an infant still alive in the cradle. An Indian warrior noted for his barbarity approached the cradle with his uplifted hatchet: the babe looked up in his face and smiled; the feelings of nature triumphed over the ferocity of the savage; the hatchet fell from his hand, and he was in the act of stooping down to take the infant in his arms, when a Royalist, cursing the Indian for his humanity, took up the child on the point of his bayonet, and as he held it up, struggling in the agonies of death, he exclaimed, 'This, too, is a rebel.'"-See Buckingham's Travels in America, vol. ii., p. 180; quoted from Narrative of " White Woman."

Another instance of extraordinary barbarity in a "British Tory," or renegade Pennsylvanian, was in the person of Simon Girty, who retired from Fort Pitt to the Muskingum, and thence to the Sandusky River, identifying himself with the Indians in their most atrocious cruelties, and conducting some of the most desolating incursions of the savages against the frontier people; and who distinguished himself among the western tribes for his enterprise and daring against the settlements, and for the zeal with which he inflicted his vengeance upon his countrymen in many bloody fields.

hand. Humanity is the same in all ages under the same circumstances. The atrocities perpetrated upon the Ohio from 1777 to 1782, and in Tennessee and the Northwestern Territory as late as 1790 and 1794, no less than the inhuman barbarities of the River Raisin in 1812, were sufficient to provoke human nature to a revenge which was truly insatiable. Hence, in their successes over their savage foes, the backwoods soldier has repaid them "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

[A.D. 1780.] Nor was the frontier settler himself proof against the example set by the savages and their British allies. More than once it has happened that the pioneer warrior, in defending his home, and in revenging the deaths of his mur dered family or of his friends, has transcended the bounds of justifiable revenge, and, yielding to the impulses of outraged humanity, has inflicted the most signal and summary death upon unresisting Indians. History does not furnish an instance in which a civilized people, waging war with savages or barbarians, have not adopted the mode of warfare necessary to place them on an equality with their antagonists. It is impossible to adapt civilized warfare to the chastisement of savages.

How can the unprotected people of the frontiers meet a savage war of extermination and cruelty? Can it be met and resisted by the lenient maxims and usages of civilized warfare? In the face of the most horrid scenes of indiscriminate slaughter, the wholesale murder of settlements in cold blood, in the face of the most atrocious murders of friends and relatives, whose ghastly wounds, inflicted by the tomahawk and scalping-knife, were crying to Heaven for vengeance, shall the guilty authors be treated as civilized men? or shall they be treated as human beings? The pioneer who has witnessed these enormities will answer, that every principle of self-preservation requires the adoption of the Indian mode of revenge in its most destructive features. Civilized warfare is inefficient with the savage, and to adhere to it in a war with them is patiently to submit to selfimmolation at the shrine of savage vengeance.

For forty years was the strife continued along the frontier settlements of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, from the first hostilities under the royal governor, Robert Dinwiddie, in 1754, to the close of the Indian hostilities by General Wayne at Fort Greenville, in August, 1795. The tribes engaged in these hostilities were alternately the "Six

Nations," and their confederates the Shawanese, the Cherokees, the Creeks, and Chickasâs. During this time but few intervals of peace were known, and for the greater portion of the time the pioneer settler was constantly menaced with the tomahawk and scalping-knife, over a scope of country extending from the sources of the Alleghany River on the north to the sources of the Cumberland and Tennessee on the south.

To the inhabitants of cities and countries long settled and cultivated, it seems wonderful that any of their race should voluntarily seek the hardships which were necessarily encountered by the early emigrants to the West. That wonder is increased by the consideration that it was at the hazard of their lives, and in the midst of incessant war. With the rifle in one hand and the ax in the other, they traversed the wilderness and erected their scattered stations. Party after party was attacked and butchered on the road through the wilderness. Boat after boat was captured, and whole families were massacred upon the Ohio River and its tributaries. Scarcely a station escaped repeated sieges by the lurking savages. Some were taken and burned; and the inmates, men, women, and children, were tomahawked, or carried prisoners to the Indian towns. The men were waylaid and shot while cultivating their crops, the women and little children were captured or murdered in their cabins while their husbands and sons were in the forest or the field. Still the adventurous pioneer advanced, and thousands from the older settlements seemed to covet the danger, which certainly had its pleasures, though mingled with bitterness.

"But could there be happiness or comfort in such dwellings, and such a state of society? To those who are accustomed to modern refinements the truth appears like fable. The early occupants of log cabins in the 'bloody land' were among the most happy of mankind. Exercise and excitement gave them health; they were practically equal; common danger made them mutually dependent; brilliant hopes of future wealth and distinction led them on; and as there was ample room for all, and as each new-comer increased individual and general security, there was little room for that envy, jealousy, and hatred which constitute a large portion of human misery in older societies. Never were the story, the joke, the song, and the laugh better enjoyed than upon the hewed blocks or puncheon stools

around the roaring log fire of the early western settler. The lyre of Apollo was not hailed with more delight in primitive Greece than the advent of the first fiddler among the dwellers of the wilderness; and the polished daughters of the East never enjoyed themselves half so well moving to the music of a full band, upon the elastic floor of their ornamented ball-room, as did the daughters of the emigrants keeping time to a self-taught fiddler on the bare earth or puncheon floor of the primitive log cabin. The smile of the polished beauty is the wave of the lake where the zephyr plays gently over it, and her movement is the gentle stream which drains it; but the laugh of the log cabin is the gush of nature's fountain, and its movement its leaping waters."*

Such were the merry hearts of the frontier people in the absence of Indian hostilities and dangers. The intervals of peace were short and uncertain, but they were seasons of refreshment, which all enjoyed as a season of rest.

Yet they lived in continual apprehension of danger and death. "The wars of the red man were terrible; not from their numbers, for on any one expedition they rarely exceeded forty men; it was the parties of six or seven which were most to be dreaded. Skill consisted in surprising the enemy. They follow his trail, to kill when he sleeps; or they lie in ambush near a village, and watch for an opportunity of suddenly surprising an individual, or, it may be, a woman and her children, and with three strokes to each the scalps of the victims are suddenly taken off, and the brave flies back with his companions to hang the trophies in his cabin, to go from village to village, exulting in procession, to hear orators recount his deeds to the elders and the chief people, and by the number of scalps gained with his own hand to gain the high war titles of honor. Nay, parties of but two or three were not uncomClad in skins, with a supply of red paint, a bow and quiver full of arrows, they would roam through the wild forest as a barque would over the ocean; for days and weeks they would hang on the skirts of their enemy, waiting the moment for striking a blow. From the heart of the Six Nations two young warriors would thread the wilderness of the South, would go through the glades of Pennsylvania, the valleys of Western Virginia, and steal within the mountain fastnesses of

mon.

* See Kendall's Life of Jackson, p. 78-81.

the Cherokees. There they would hide themselves in the clefts of rocks, and change their place of concealment, till, provided with scalps enough to astonish their village, they would bound over the ledges and hurry home. It was the danger of such inroads in time of war that made every white family on the frontier insecure."*

The state of Indian hostilities is one of terror to the stoutest heart, because the feeble, the unprotected, and the sleeping families are their chief victims. During a state of active hostilities against an extended frontier settlement, the Indians seldom appear in great force, or desire to meet the white man in the field of battle. If an Indian army approach the settlements, it is only to divide into numerous bands or scalping parties, for distribution against each unprotected habitation, which may become an easy prey to their wiles. These parties separate, and skulk through dense forests, concealed behind trees, bushes, logs, stumps, or in cane-brakes and tall grass, until some victim, unconscious of his approach, hears but the crack of the rifle announcing his own instant death. By night, a fearless band will gain a covert, in full view of some unsuspecting settlement, from which they can observe every movement, until evening twilight approaches, when they advance and sacrifice every soul to their vengeance.

When they appear in great force before a fort or station, where many families are congregated for protection, after the first assault scarce an Indian is seen by the besieged. Without cannon or scaling-ladders, their hope of carrying the place is predicated upon stratagem, or upon starving the inmates into capitulation. They waylay every path, and stop the supplies of water and food, and cut off their victims in detail, without exposing themselves to danger. They kill the cattle, destroy the hogs, steal the horses, plunder every thing which can be of use to them; burn the deserted houses, the barns, the stacks of grain and hay, and cut off all intercourse with those who might render them aid. The chief glory of the savage warrior is to inflict the greatest injury upon his enemy with the least injury or exposure to himself; hence he deems it an act of superior merit to destroy the unwary, the sleeping, and the unresisting victim. Although he often engages in acts of fearess daring, it is not his policy to expose his person; hence.

* Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 281, 282.