aptives, according to their invariable custom. Boon and Floyd each shot
one of the savages, and the remaining three escaped almost naked,
without gun, tomahawk, or scalping-knife. The girls were unharmed, for
the Indians rarely molested their captives on the journey to the home
towns, unless their strength gave out, when they were tomahawked without
mercy.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A--TO CHAPTER IV.

It is greatly to be wished that some competent person would write a full
and true history of our national dealings with the Indians. Undoubtedly
the latter have often suffered terrible injustice at our hands. A number
of instances, such as the conduct of the Georgians to the Cherokees in
the early part of the present century, or the whole treatment of Chief
Joseph and his Nez Perces, might be mentioned, which are indelible blots
on our fair fame; and yet, in describing our dealings with the red men
as a whole, historians do us much less than justice.

It was wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, unless
we were willing to see the American continent fall into the hands of
some other strong power; and even had we adopted such a ludicrous
policy, the Indians themselves would have made war upon us. It cannot be
too often insisted that they did not own the land; or, at least, that
their ownership was merely such as that claimed often by our own white
hunters. If the Indians really owned Kentucky in 1775, then in 1776 it
was the property of Boon and his associates; and to dispossess one party
was as great a wrong as to dispossess the other. To recognize the Indian
ownership of the limitless prairies and forests of this continent--that
is, to consider the dozen squalid savages who hunted at long intervals
over a territory of a thousand square miles as owning it
outright--necessarily implies a similar recognition of the claims of
every white hunter, squatter, horse-thief, or wandering cattle-man. Take
as an example the country round the Little Missouri. When the
cattle-men, the first actual settlers, came into this land in 1882, it
was already scantily peopled by a few white hunters and trappers. The
latter were extremely jealous of intrusion; they had held their own in
spite of the Indians, and, like the Indians, the inrush of settlers and
the consequent destruction of the game meant their own undoing; also,
again like the Indians, they felt that their having hunted over the soil
gave them a vague pres