al security to the army, as Indians do not
require roads to enable them to advance upon an enemy. For the same
reason (that they would be killed or taken), patrols were rejected, and
reliance for safety was entirely placed upon keeping the army always
ready for action. In connection with this system for constant
preparation, there was only a chain of sentinels around the camps,
furnished by the camp guards, who were placed within supporting
distance."

The outline and adoption of this system of tactics shows that both
Washington and Anthony Wayne were fully aware of the dangerous nature of
their savage adversaries; that they had a wholesome respect for both
their woodcraft and military discipline, and that they regarded the
conquest of the western wilderness as a task requiring great
circumspection and military genius.

CHAPTER VII

REAL SAVAGES

--_The savage painted in his true colors from the standpoint of the
frontiersman._

The poets and philosophers who dwelt in security far from the frontier
posts of danger, have been much disposed in the past to extol the
virtues of the savage and bewail his misfortunes, at the expense of the
rugged pioneer who had to face his tomahawk and furnish victims for his
mad vengeance. They went into rhapsodies when speaking of the "poor
Indian," assuming that in his primitive state, before he was corrupted
by contact with the manners and customs of the white man, he represented
all that was pure, good and simple, and that only after the European
came, did this child of nature take on that ferocity and savagery that
made his name the terror of the wilderness. They said that he was
cruelly and unjustly despoiled of his lands and possessions; driven like
a wild beast before the face of the settlements, and by fraud and force
deprived of every right that he had enjoyed. These philosophers, while
thus impeaching civilization, were always ready to condemn what they
termed as the "rude frontiersmen," the men who originally made it
possible that the land might be inhabited, the soil brought to a state
of cultivation, and the arts and sciences brought to bear upon the wild
forces of nature. They were especially severe in their animadversions
upon the Kentuckians. They denounced their raids upon the Indian towns
and villages along the Scioto and the Wabash as barbarous and uncalled
for. They pointed to the fact that the Kentuckians pursued the Indians
with a fierce and relentless