tacked man as well.[43] More terrible
still, the wolves sometimes went mad, and the men who then encountered
them were almost certain to be bitten and to die of hydrophobia.[44]

Every true backwoodsman was a hunter. Wild turkeys were plentiful. The
pigeons at times filled the woods with clouds that hid the sun and broke
down the branches on their roosting grounds as if a whirlwind had
passed. The black and gray squirrels swarmed, devastating the
corn-fields, and at times gathering in immense companies and migrating
across mountain and river. The hunter's ordinary game was the deer, and
after that the bear; the elk was already growing uncommon. No form of
labor is harder than the chase, and none is so fascinating nor so
excellent as a training-school for war. The successful still-hunter of
necessity possessed skill in hiding and in creeping noiselessly upon the
wary quarry, as well as in imitating the notes and calls of the
different beasts and birds; skill in the use of the rifle and in
throwing the tomahawk he already had; and he perforce acquired keenness
of eye, thorough acquaintance with woodcraft, and the power of standing
the severest strains of fatigue, hardship and exposure. He lived out in
the woods for many months with no food but meat, and no shelter
whatever, unless he made a lean-to of brush or crawled into a hollow
sycamore.

Such training stood the frontier folk in good stead when they were
pitted against the Indians; without it they could not even have held
their own, and the white advance would have been absolutely checked. Our
frontiers were pushed westward by the warlike skill and adventurous
personal prowess of the individual settlers; regular armies by
themselves could have done little. For one square mile the regular
armies added to our domain, the settlers added ten,--a hundred would
probably be nearer the truth. A race of peaceful, unwarlike farmers
would have been helpless before such foes as the red Indians, and no
auxiliary military force could have protected them or enabled them to
move westward. Colonists fresh from the old world, no matter how
thrifty, steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on the
frontier; they had to settle where they were protected from the Indians
by a living barrier of bold and self-reliant American borderers.[45] The
west would never have been settled save for the fierce courage and the
eager desire to brave danger so characteristic of the stalwart