INDIAN WARS ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER.
In presenting an outline of the annals of the settlement of the western
frontier, we must remember that a dreary uniformity of incident marks
all the story of the primitive settlements in every part of our country,
from Plymouth to Jamestown, and from the northern lakes to the Mexican
gulf, and that to enter into a narration of individual efforts and
sufferings, and less important triumphs and defeats, would only render
our chronicles a confused mass of rencounters of the rifle and tomahawk,
of burnings, murders, captivities and reprisals, which confound by their
number and weary by their monotony and resemblance. A few more
prominent events only can be selected as samples of the many others.
A few names only, from the long catalogue of pioneers, can be mentioned.
The memory of the hundreds necessarily omitted lives where they
would have wished it to live—in the winter evening's recital, in the
rustic mountain ballad, and in the rude but interesting tradition of
border warfare.
The first white woman who saw the Kanawha river was
