Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/369

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 361 he, "the grandest game of all is Indians." And Daniel Boone was not a bad or blood-thirsty man. In fact quite the reverse. From his first entry into Kentucky, that * ' Dark and Bloody Ground," his life was one long contest with the sav- ages, with scarcely an intermission of peace. From the per- sistence and intensity with which the Indians of that State and the country north of the Ohio River resisted the white man's approach, it seemed as though they were actuated by a common purpose to defend their country to the last extremity. There is nothing more exciting in human annals, nothing more inspiring to the virile resolution and forces of men than the hair-breadth escapes, the thrilling adventures and heroic fortitu.de exhibited by the pioneers in their life-and-death struggle with the red man for possession of the great, rich and beautiful valley of the Ohio. And Daniel Boone was the wise counsellor, the indefatigable protector, the wary and skillful warrior, in truth, the most striking and picturesque figure of the many extraordinary personages, both men and women, who contributed to the desired result. In his day and in his circumstances, there was no room for philosophical disquisition and broad views that might have brought other means to bear in the solution of that terrible problem, and he can well be pardoned for an utterance in his old age which smacks of a love of diabolism. Omitting the Indian's side of the story, the needless indi- vidual aggressions, the breaking of promises that involved the public faith, some of them that in the nature of things could not be fulfilled and ought never to have been made, the making of treaties under duress, the frequently recurring and cruel demands to leave their ancestral homes and burial places and go westward into strange and comparatively barren regions surrounded by enemies of their own race, omitting all these from the white man 's view, as indeed they were, and recollect- ing only his own side, the vacant seats at the fireside, the ambush and the Indian 's deadly aim, the captivity and torture, the scalping knife and tomahawk, is it any particular wonder that in his view the only good Indians are dead Indians and