hatred, using the scalping knife, and
burning down their cabins and corn fields, forgetting at the same time
the thousands of Kentuckians cruelly slain, the carrying away into
captivity of pregnant women and innocent children, and the horrible
tortures ofttimes inflicted on the aged and the helpless.

It must never be forgotten that despite his stoicism in facing danger,
his skill in battle, his power to endure privation, and his undoubted
valor and bravery, that the Indian was a savage, and entertained the
thoughts of a savage. Toward those who, like the French, pampered his
appetites and indulged his passions to secure his trade, he entertained
no malice. The lazy, fiddling Canadians who dwelt in Kaskaskia and
Vincennes, had no ambition to absorb the soil or build up a great
commonwealth. The little land they required to raise their corn, their
vines and their onions on, aroused no savage jealousies. But from the
first moment that the Americans came through the gaps and passes of the
Blue Ridge, and swept down the waters of the Ohio, with their women and
children, their horses and cattle, the savage scented danger. These men
were not traders; they came to set up their cabins and to build homes.
The wild dwellers in the wilderness must be tamed or swept back.
Conflict was inevitable; war certain. On the one hand was a grim
determination to advance civilization; on the other, just as grim a
determination to resist it. The savage, employing the same arts in his
wars with the white man as he did in his wars with his fellow savage,
used stealth and cunning, the ambuscade, the scalping knife, and the
tomahawk, and tortured his victims at the stake. A terrible hatred was
engendered, that meant death and extermination. In the sanguinary
struggles that followed, many outrages were no doubt perpetrated by
lawless white men upon the Indians. Such men as Lewis Wetzel are no
credit to a race. But there is no sufficient ground either for the
exaltation of the savage, or the condemnation of men like Boone, Kenton,
Hardin and Scott, who stoutly fought in the vanguard of civilization. It
was a war for supremacy between white man and red, and the fittest
survived. The wild hunters of the forest and river, gave way to farmers
and woodsmen, who made the clearings, built their cabins, and laid the
foundation for the future greatness of the west. The passing of the
tribes was a tragedy, but it would have been a deeper tragedy still, had
sa