ed districts remote from the
frontier shared these views of large, though vague, beneficence. But
neither the white frontiersmen nor their red antagonists possessed
"philosophic minds." They represented two stages of progress, ages
apart; and it would have needed many centuries to bring the lower to the
level of the higher. Both sides recognized the fact that their interests
were incompatible; and that the question of their clashing rights had to
be settled by the strong hand.

The Trouble Most Serious in the North.

In the Northwest matters culminated sooner than in the Southwest. The
Georgians, and the settlers along the Tennessee and Cumberland, were
harassed rather than seriously menaced by the Creek war parties; but in
the north the more dangerous Indians of the Miami, the Wabash, and the
Lakes gathered in bodies so large as fairly to deserve the name of
armies. Moreover, the pressure of the white advance was far heavier in
the north. The pioneers who settled in the Ohio basin were many times as
numerous as those who settled on the lands west of the Oconee and north
of the Cumberland, and were fed from States much more populous. The
advance was stronger, the resistance more desperate; naturally the open
break occurred where the strain was most intense.

There was fierce border warfare in the south. In the north there were
regular campaigns carried on, and pitched battles fought, between
Federal armies as large as those commanded by Washington at Trenton or
Greene at Eutaw Springs, and bodies of Indian warriors more numerous
than had ever yet appeared on any single field.

The United States Government Driven to War.

The newly created Government of the United States was very reluctant to
make formal war on the northwestern Indians. Not only were President
Washington and the National Congress honorably desirous of peace, but
they were hampered for funds, and dreaded any extra expense.
Nevertheless they were forced into war. Throughout the years 1789 and
1790 an increasing volume of appeals for help came from the frontier
countries. The governor of the Northwestern Territory, the
brigadier-general of the troops on the Ohio, the members of the Kentucky
Convention, and all the county lieutenants of Kentucky, the lieutenants
of the frontier counties of Virginia proper, the representatives from
the counties, the field officers of the different districts, the General
Assembly of Virginia, all sent bitter compl