Introduction
and land always just over the border laid down in the latest covenant with the Indian, even though covered with the crops of Indians turned to the white man's way. His development of the new country was significant of strength and virility; it extended the bounds of civilization, and, in his rough way, he knew of civilization's debt to him and his kind.
The neighbor of this man was an untutored, subdued child of nature, taking his first lesson in the pioneer's own well-mastered art. He was not a voter,—not even a man, in the eyes of the law. His efforts were those of a beginner,—uncertain, lacking efficiency, and of little economic effect.
How else could such a man as the pioneer regard this primitive school in the wilderness, and these little beginnings, than as a sentimental effort of small consequence in the general scheme? The Indian's right and the white man's obligation were nothing to him. He had seen the less forceful of his own kind go down to failure before the obstacles which he himself had overcome, and he measured the worth of both Indian and white man alike by the test of strength and efficiency. The abandoned efforts of his departed white neighbor had inured to his benefit, and he looked with anticipation upon the Indian's small improvements as the next in order to come. To develop new country was his business, and in his greater ability to develop its resources he thought he saw his better right to the Indian's land.
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