ian fighters, who
first went west of the mountains. General Rufus Putnam and his
associates did a deed the consequences of which were of vital
importance. They showed that they possessed the highest attributes of
good citizenship--resolution and sagacity, stern morality, and the
capacity to govern others as well as themselves. But they performed no
pioneer feat of any note as such, and they were not called upon to
display a tithe of the reckless daring and iron endurance of hardship
which characterized the conquerors of the Illinois and the founders of
Kentucky and Tennessee. This is in no sense a reflection upon them. They
did not need to give proof of a courage they had shown time and again in
bloody battles against the best troops of Europe. In this particular
enterprise, in which they showed so many admirable qualities, they had
little chance to show the quality of adventurous bravery. They drifted
comfortably down stream, from the log fort whence they started, past
many settlers' houses, until they came to the post of a small Federal
garrison, where they built their town. Such a trip is not to be
mentioned in the same breath with the long wanderings of Clark and Boone
and Robertson, when they went forth unassisted to subdue the savage and
make tame the shaggy wilderness.

St. Clair.

St. Clair, the first Governor, was a Scotchman of good family. He had
been a patriotic but unsuccessful general in the Revolutionary army. He
was a friend of Washington, and in politics a firm Federalist; he was
devoted to the cause of Union and Liberty, and was a conscientious,
high-minded man. But he had no aptitude for the incredibly difficult
task of subduing the formidable forest Indians, with their peculiar and
dangerous system of warfare; and he possessed no capacity for getting on
with the frontiersmen, being without sympathy for their virtues while
keenly alive to their very unattractive faults.

The Miami Purchase.

In the fall of 1787 another purchase of public lands was negotiated, by
the Miami Company. The chief personage in this company was John Cleves
Symmes, one of the first judges of the Northwestern Territory. Rights
were acquired to take up one million acres, and under these rights three
small settlements were made towards the close of the year 1788. One of
them was chosen by St. Clair to be the seat of government. This little
town had been called Losantiville in its first infancy, but St. Clair
re-chris