The Winning of the West, Volume Four | Page 4

the mouth of the Mississippi rather than the right to move westward to
the Pacific. There were more men in the new communities than in the
old who saw, however imperfectly, the grandeur of the opportunity and
of the race-destiny: but there were always very many who did their
share in working out their destiny grudgingly and under protest.
The Race Grows because its Interests Happen to be Identical with those
of the Individual.
The race as a whole, in its old homes and its new, learns the lesson with
such difficulty that it can scarcely be said to be learnt at all until
success or interests failure has done away with the need of learning it.
But in the case of our own people it has fortunately happened that the
concurrence of the interests of the individual and of the whole organism
has been normal throughout most of its history.
The United States and Great Britain in 1791.
The attitude of the United States and Great Britain, as they faced one
another in the western wilderness at the beginning of the year 1791, is
but another illustration of the truth of this fact. The British held the lake
posts, and more or less actively supported the Indians in their efforts to
bar the Americans from the Northwest. Nominally, they held the posts
because the Americans had themselves left unfulfilled some of the
conditions of the treaty of peace; but this was felt not to be the real

reason, and the Americans loudly protested that their conduct was due
to sheer hatred of the young Republic. The explanation was simpler.
The British had no far-reaching design to prevent the spread and
growth of the English-speaking people on the American continent.
They cared nothing, one way or the other, for that spread and growth,
and it is unlikely that they wasted a moment's thought on the ultimate
future of the race. All that they desired was to preserve the very
valuable fur-trade of the region round the Great Lakes for their own
benefit. They were acting from the motives of self-interest that usually
control nations; and it never entered their heads to balance against these
immediate interests the future of a nation many of whose members
were to them mere foreigners.
Reluctance of the Americans to Enter into War with the Indians.
The majority of the Americans, on their side, were exceedingly loth to
enter into aggressive war with the Indians: but were reluctantly forced
into the contest by the necessity of supporting the backwoodsmen. The
frontier was pushed westward, not because the leading statesmen of
America, or the bulk of the American people, foresaw the continental
greatness of this country or strove for such greatness; but because the
bordermen of the West, and the adventurous land-speculators of the
East, were personally interested in acquiring new territory, and because,
against their will, the governmental representatives of the nation were
finally forced to make the interests of the Westerners their own. The
people of the seaboard, the leaders of opinion in the coast towns and
old-settled districts, were inclined to look eastward, rather than
westward. They were interested in the quarrels of the old-world nations;
they were immediately concerned in the rights of the fisheries they
jealously shared with England, or the trade they sought to secure with
Spain. They did not covet the Indian lands. They had never heard of the
Rocky Mountains--nobody had as yet,--they cared as little for the
Missouri as for the Congo, and they thought of the Pacific Slope as a
savage country, only to be reached by an ocean voyage longer than the
voyage to India. They believed that they were entitled, under the treaty,
to the country between the Alleghanies and the Great Lakes; but they
were quite content to see the Indians remain in actual occupancy, and
they had no desire to spend men and money in driving them out.
Nevertheless, they were even less disposed to proceed to extremities

against their own people, who in very fact were driving out the Indians;
and this was the only alternative, for in the end they had to side with
one or the other set of combatants.
The governmental authorities of the newly created Republic shared
these feelings. They felt no hunger for the Indian lands; they felt no
desire to stretch their boundaries and thereby add to their already heavy
burdens and responsibilities. They wished to do strict justice to the
Indians; the treaties they held with them were carried on with
scrupulous fairness and were honorably lived up to by the United States
officials.
The Government Especially Averse to War.
They strove to keep peace, and made many efforts to persuade the
frontiersmen to observe the Indian boundary lines, and not to intrude on
the territory