The Winning of the West, Volume Four | Page 2

the causes and course of the Indian wars.
In this volume I have made use of the material to which reference was
made in the first; beside the American State Papers, I have drawn on
the Canadian Archives, the Draper Collection, including especially the
papers from the Spanish archives, the Robertson MSS., and the Clay

MSS. for hitherto unused matter. I have derived much assistance from
the various studies and monographs on special phases of Western
history; I refer to each in its proper place. I regret that Mr. Stephen B.
Weeks' valuable study of the Martin family did not appear in time for
me to use it while writing about the little state of Franklin, in my third
volume.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL, LONG ISLAND,
_May_, 1896.
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I. ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT, 1791
II. MAD ANTHONY WAYNE; AND THE FIGHT OF THE FALLEN
TIMBERS, 1792-1795
III. TENNESSEE BECOMES A STATE, 1791-1796
IV. INTRIGUES AND LAND SPECULATIONS--THE TREATIES
OF JAY AND PINCKNEY, 1793-1797.
V. THE MEN OF THE WESTERN WATERS, 1798-1802
VI. THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA; AND BURR'S
CONSPIRACY, 1803-1807
VII. THE EXPLORERS OF THE FAR WEST, 1804-1807.
APPENDIX
INDEX
[Illustration: Map Showing the First Explorations of the Great West.
Based on a map by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

THE WINNING OF THE WEST.

CHAPTER I
.
ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT, 1791.
The Westward March of the Backwoodsman.
The backwoods folk, the stark hunters and tree-fellers, and the
war-worn regulars who fought beside them in the forest, pushed ever
westward the frontier of the Republic. Year after year each group of
rough settlers and rough soldiers wrought its part in the great epic of
wilderness conquest.
The people that for one or more generations finds its allotted task in the
conquest of a continent, has before it the possibility of splendid victory,
and the certainty of incredible toil, suffering, and hardship. The
opportunity is great indeed; but the chance of disaster is even greater.
Success is for a mighty race, in its vigorous and masterful prime. It is
an opportunity such as is offered to an army by a struggle against a
powerful foe; only by great effort can defeat be avoided, but triumph
means lasting honor and renown.
As it is in the battle, so it is in the infinitely greater contests where the
fields of fight are continents, and the ages form the measure of time. In
actual life the victors win in spite of brutal blunders and repeated
checks.
The Grimness and Harshness of Frontier Life.
Watched nearby, while the fight stamps to and fro, the doers and the
deeds stand out naked and ugly. We see all too clearly the blood and
sweat, the craft and dunning and blind luck, the raw cruelty and
stupidity, the shortcomings of heart and hand, the mad abuse of victory.
Strands of meanness and cowardice are everywhere shot through the
warp of lofty and generous daring. There are failures bitter and
shameful side by side with feats of triumphant prowess. Of those who
venture in the contest some achieve success; others strive feebly and
fail ignobly.
Only a Mighty Race Fit for the Trial.
If a race is weak, if it is lacking in the physical and moral traits which
go to the makeup of a conquering people, it cannot succeed. For three

hundred years the Portuguese possessed footholds in South Africa; but
they left to the English and Dutch the task of building free communities
able to hold in fact as well as in name the country south of the Zambesi.
Temperate South America is as fertile and healthy for the white man as
temperate North America, and is so much less in extent as to offer a far
simpler problem of conquest and settlement; yet the Spaniard, who
came to the Plata two centuries before the American backwoodsman
reached the Mississippi, scarcely made as much progress in a decade as
his northern rival did in a year.
The task must be given the race just at the time when it is ready for the
undertaking. The whole future of the world would have been changed
had the period of trans-oceanic expansion among the nations of Europe
begun at a time when the Scandinavians or Germans were foremost in
sea-trade and sea-war; if it had begun when the fleets of the Norsemen
at the threatened all coasts, or when the Hanseatic league was in its
prime.
No race can Succeed Save at the Right Moment.
But in the actual event the days of Scandinavian supremacy at sea
resulted in no spread of the Scandinavian tongue or culture; and the
temporary maritime prosperity of the North German cities bore no
permanent fruit of conquest for the German people. The only nations
that profited by the expansion beyond the