The backwoodsmen, wonted to vigorous athletic pastimes, and to fierce brawls among themselves, were generally overmatches for the Indians in hand-to-hand struggles.  One such fight, that took place some years before this time, deserves mention.  A man of herculean strength and of fierce, bold nature, named Bingaman, lived on the frontier in a lonely log-house.  The cabin had but a single room below, in which Bingaman slept, as well as his mother, wife, and child; a hired man slept in the loft.  One night eight Indians assailed the house.  As they burst in the door Bingaman thrust the women and the child under the bed, his wife being wounded by a shot in the breast.  Then having discharged his piece he began to beat about at random with the long heavy rifle.  The door swung partially to, and in the darkness nothing could be seen.  The numbers of the Indians helped them but little, for Bingaman’s tremendous strength enabled him to shake himself free whenever grappled.  One after another his foes sank under his crushing blows, killed or crippled; it is said that at last but one was left to flee from the house in terror.  The hired man had not dared to come down from the loft, and when Bingaman found his wife wounded he became so enraged that it was with difficulty he could be kept from killing him. [Footnote:  It is curious how faithfully, as well as vividly, Cooper has reproduced these incidents.  His pictures of the white frontiersmen are generally true to life; in his most noted Indian characters he is much less fortunate.  But his “Indian John” in the “Pioneers” is one of his best portraits; almost equal praise can he given to Susquesus in the “Chainbearers.”]

Incidents such as these followed one another in quick succession.  They deserve notice less for their own sakes than as examples of the way the West was won; for the land was really conquered not so much by the actual shock of battle between bodies of soldiers, as by the continuous westward movement of the armed settlers and the unceasing individual warfare waged between them and their red foes.

For the same reason one or two of the more noted hunters and Indian scouts deserve mention, as types of hundreds of their fellows, who spent their lives and met their deaths in the forest.  It was their warfare that really did most to diminish the fighting force of the tribes.  They battled exactly as their foes did, making forays, alone or in small parties, for scalps and horses, and in their skirmishes inflicted as much loss as they received; in striking contrast to what occurred in conflicts between the savages and regular troops.

    The Hunter Wetzel.