ho went
out from his kindred as Abraham did, and planted his tents where
fancy led him, and moved at his whim or with his game. Every one
of the Indian tribes that had been driven by the white man from
the east and the south chose his camping and hunting grounds in
the region of the O-hi-o, often driving away a weaker tribe. Their
contests with white men had given them some knowledge of fire-arms,
and some of them had been marshaled under arms in the wars between
the English and the French, but, as a rule, the Indians encountered
by our race since the landing at Jamestown were all of the same
type of wandering savages. The difference between these tribes
can be accounted for by their location, whether on the seashore or
in the forest or plain, and by the strength of the tribe, from the
powerful Six Nations to the feeble band in possession of some chosen
valley.

Whatever may be said of the irrepressible conflicts between the
white man and the Indians, waged often with savage and relentless
cruelties on both sides, it may as truly be said that the same
savage conflicts have been carried on between the different tribes
of Indians, which often ended by the extermination of the weaker
tribe, or the absorption of the feeble remnant with the stronger
tribe. This was certainly the case with the Indian tribes of the
northwest territory. Ohio was the battleground for destructive
warfare between the Indian tribes long before the white man gained
a foothold on its soil.

In 1755, when the war with France commenced, the English settlements
covered the Atlantic Coast, but did not extend across the Alleghany
Mountains, though a few hardy pioneers may have wandered into the
wilderness beyond. But French missionaries, inspired with religious
zeal, had penetrated all the northwest territory, including the
great lakes. In 1673 Marquette and Joliet, two of these missionaries,
after years spent with the Indians on the shores of the lakes,
winning their confidence by humility and care, followed the lines
of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers from the shores of Lake Michigan,
and discovered the great river "with a joy that could not be
expressed," and floated upon its waters to the mouth of the
Arkansas.

It is impossible to read the interesting narratives of these
missionaries, of their life among the Indians of the northwest,
and their enthusiastic description of the new and wonderful land
they had discovered, without a feeling of a