But their
marvellous faculty for taking advantage of cover, and for fighting in
concert when under cover, has always made the warlike tribes foes to be
dreaded beyond all others when in the woods, or among wild broken
mountains.

Striking Contrasts in our Indian Wars.

The history of our warfare with the Indians during the century following
the close of the Revolution is marked by curiously sharp contrasts in
the efficiency shown by the regular troops in campaigns carried on at
different times and under varying conditions. These contrasts are due
much more to the difference in the conditions under which the campaigns
were waged than to the difference in the bodily prowess of the Indians.
When we had been in existence as a nation for a century the Modocs in
their lava-beds and the Apaches amid their waterless mountains were
still waging against the regulars of the day the same tedious and
dangerous warfare waged against Harmar and St. Clair by the forest
Indians. There were the same weary, long-continued campaigns; the same
difficulty in bringing the savages to battle; the same blind fighting
against hidden antagonists shielded by the peculiar nature of their
fastnesses; and, finally, the same great disparity of loss against the
white troops. During the intervening hundred years there had been many
similar struggles; as for instance that against the Seminoles. Yet there
had also been many struggles, against Indians naturally more formidable,
in which the troops again and again worsted their Indian foes even when
the odds in numbers were two or three to one against the whites. The
difference between these different classes of wars was partly accounted
for by change in weapons and methods of fighting; partly by the change
in the character of the battle grounds. The horse Indians of the plains
were as elusive and difficult to bring to battle as the Indians of the
mountains and forests; but in the actual fighting they had no chance to
take advantage of cover in the way which rendered so formidable their
brethren of the hills and the deep woods. In consequence their
occasional slaughtering victories, including the most famous of all, the
battle of the Rosebud, in which Custer fell, took the form of the
overwhelming of a comparatively small number of whites by immense masses
of mounted horsemen. When their weapons were inferior, as on the first
occasions when they were brought into contact with troops carrying
breech-lo