elves better, and yet the ratio was probably as ten to
one;[55] whereas in this war, if we consider only males of fighting age,
it is probable that a good deal more than half as many Indians as whites
were killed, and even including women and children, the ratio would not
rise to more than three to one. Certainly, in all the contests waged
against the northwestern Indians during the last half of the eighteenth
century there was no other where the whites inflicted so great a
relative loss on their foes. Its results were most important. It kept
the northwestern tribes quiet for the first two years of the
Revolutionary struggle; and above all it rendered possible the
settlement of Kentucky, and therefore the winning of the West. Had it
not been for Lord Dunmore's war, it is more than likely that when the
colonies achieved their freedom they would have found their western
boundary fixed at the Alleghany Mountains.[56]

Nor must we permit our sympathy for the foul wrongs of the two great
Indian heroes of the contest to blind us to the fact that the struggle
was precipitated, in the first place, by the outrages of the red men,
not the whites; and that the war was not only inevitable, but was also
in its essence just and righteous on the part of the borderers. Even the
unpardonable and hideous atrocity of the murder of Logan's family, was
surpassed in horror by many of the massacres committed by the Indians
about the same time. The annals of the border are dark and terrible.

Among the characters who played the leaders' parts in this short and
tragic drama of the backwoods few came to much afterwards. Cresap died a
brave Revolutionary soldier. Of Greathouse we know nothing; we can only
hope that eventually the Indians scalped him. Conolly became a virulent
tory, who yet lacked the power to do the evil that he wished. Lewis
served creditably in the Revolution; while at its outbreak Lord Dunmore
was driven from Virginia and disappears from our ken. Proud, gloomy
Logan never recovered from the blow that had been dealt him; he drank
deeper and deeper, and became more and more an implacable, moody, and
bloodthirsty savage, yet with noble qualities that came to the surface
now and then. Again and again he wrought havoc among the frontier
settlers; yet we several times hear of his saving the lives of
prisoners. Once he saved Simon Kenton from torture and death, when
Girty, moved by a rare spark of compassion for his former comrade, h