ers along the banks of the river, in the
shadow of the ancient woods, or in the sunshine of the beautiful
meadows, as the earliest white visitors to Ohio called the small
prairies which they came upon in the heart of the forests. We see a
large council house of bark, as nearly in the midst of the scattered
huts as may be, where the Miamis hold their solemn debates, receive
embassies from other tribes, welcome their warriors home from their
forays, and celebrate their feasts and dances. We see fields bordering
the village, where the squaws plant their corn and beans, and the maple
groves where they make their sugar. Among the men and boys we see the
busy idleness of children, all day long, except when the grown-up
children go out upon a hunt, or take the warpath. Sometimes we see an
English trader coming with his merchandise and presents, or a captive
brought in to be tortured and burnt, or adopted into the tribe.

The tribes in the Ohio country were far abler than those that the
English first met to the eastward, and they were fiercer than the
fiercest which the Americans have at last brought under control in the
plains of the Far West. Pitiless as Sioux and Apache and Comanche have
shown themselves in their encounters with the whites in our day, they
were surpassed in ferocity by the Shawnees, the Wyandots, and the Miamis
whom the backwoodsmen met in a thousand fights, a century or a century
and a half ago. The Ohio Indians were unspeakably vicious, treacherous,
and filthy, but they were as brave as they were vile, and they were
as sagacious as they were false. They produced men whom we must call
orators, statesmen, and generals, even when tested by the high standards
of civilization. They excelled us in the art of war as it was adapted
to the woods, and they despised the stupid and wasteful courage of the
disciplined English soldier. Till the white men studied war from them
they were always beaten in their fights with the red men, and it was
hardly the fault of the Indians if the pioneers learned from them to be
savages: to kill women and children as well as armed men, to tomahawk
and scalp the wounded, to butcher helpless prisoners. But this befell,
and it is this which makes many of the stories of Ohio so bloody. We
must know their hideous facts fully if we would know them truly, or if
we would realize the life that once passed in the shadows of our woods.

The region that we now call Ohio was wonderfully varied and