he
Indian wars, tell with interminable repetition stories, grewsome in
their blood-thirstiness, and as monotonous in theme as they are varied
in detail:--how such and such a settler was captured by two Indians,
and, watching his chance, fell on his captors when they sat down to
dinner and slew them "with a squaw-axe"; how another man was
treacherously attacked by two Indians who had pretended to be peaceful
traders, and how, though wounded, he killed them both; how two or three
cabins were surprised by the savages and all the inhabitants slain; or
how a flotilla of flatboats was taken and destroyed while moored to the
bank of the Ohio; and so on without end. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Major
McCully to Captain Biddle, Pittsburgh, May 5, 1792; B. Netherland to
Evan Shelby, July 5, 1793, etc., etc. Also Kentucky _Gazette_, Sept. I,
1792; Charleston _Gazette_, July 22, 1791, etc.]

The Frontiersmen Wish War.

The United States authorities vainly sought peace; while the British
instigated the tribes to war, and the savages themselves never thought
of ceasing their hostilities. The frontiersmen also wished war, and
regarded the British and Indians with an equal hatred. They knew that
the presence of the British in the Lake Posts meant Indian war; they
knew that the Indians would war on them, whether they behaved well or
ill, until the tribes suffered some signal overthrow; and they coveted
the Indian lands with a desire as simple as it was brutal. Nor were land
hunger and revenge the only motives that stirred them to aggression;
meaner feelings were mixed with the greed for untilled prairie and
unfelled forest, and the fierce longing for blood. Throughout our
history as a nation, as long as we had a frontier, there was always a
class of frontiersmen for whom an Indian war meant the chance to acquire
wealth at the expense of the Government: and on the Ohio in 1792 and '93
there were plenty of men who, in the event of a campaign, hoped to make
profit out of the goods, horses, and cattle they supplied the soldiers.
One of Madison's Kentucky friends wrote him with rather startling
frankness that the welfare of the new State hinged on the advent of an
army to assail the Indians, first, because of the defence it would give
the settlers, and, secondly, because it would be the chief means for
introducing into the country a sufficient quantity of money for
circulation. [Footnote: State Dep. MSS., Madison Papers, Hubbard Taylor
to M