ry turn; he might even be murdered with impunity. Abraham
Lincoln's uncle thought it a virtuous act to shoot an Indian on sight,
and the majority of pioneers agreed with him.

"I can tell at once," wrote Harrison in 1801, "upon looking at an Indian
whom I may chance to meet whether he belongs to a neighboring or a
more distant tribe. The latter is generally well-clothed, healthy, and
vigorous; the former half-naked, filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication,
and many of them without arms excepting a knife, which they carry for
the most villainous purposes." The stronger tribes perceived quite as
clearly as did the Governor the ruinous effects of contact between the
two peoples, and the steady destruction of the border warriors became
a leading cause of discontent. Congress had passed laws intended to
prevent the sale of spiritucus liquors to the natives, but the courts
had construed these measures to be operative only outside the bounds of
States and organized Territories, and in the great unorganized Northwest
the laws were not heeded, and the ruinous traffic went on uninterrupted.
Harrison reported that when there were only six hundred warriors on the
Wabash the annual consumption of whiskey there was six thousand gallons,
and that killing each other in drunken brawls had "become so customary
that it was no longer thought criminal."

Most exasperating, however, from the red man's point of view was the
insatiable demand of the newcomers for land. In the years 1803, 1804,
and 1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of the Miami, Eel
River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware tribes--characterized by him as "a body
of the most depraved wretches on earth"--which gained for the settlers a
strip of territory fifty miles wide south of White River; and in 1809 he
similarly acquired, by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, three million acres,
in tracts which cut into the heart of the Indian country for almost a
hundred miles up both banks of the Wabash. The Wabash valley was richer
in game than any other region south of Lake Michigan, and its loss was
keenly felt by the Indians. Indeed, it was mainly the cession of 1809
that brought once more to a crisis the long-brewing difficulties with
the Indians.

About the year 1768 the Creek squaw of a Shawnee warrior gave birth
at one time to three boys, in the vicinity of the present city of
Springfield, Ohio. * One of the three barely left his name in aboriginal
annals. A second, known as Laulewasika