The violence of the bad is easily understood.  The indifference displayed towards their actions by the better men of the community, who were certainly greatly in the majority, is harder to explain.  It rose from varying causes.  In the first place, the long continuance of Indian warfare, and the unspeakable horrors that were its invariable accompaniments had gradually wrought up many even of the best of the backwoodsmen to the point where they barely considered an Indian as a human being.  The warrior was not to them a creature of romance.  They knew him for what he was—­filthy, cruel, lecherous, and faithless.  He sometimes had excellent qualities, but these they seldom had a chance to see.  They always met him at his worst.  To them he was in peace a lazy, dirty, drunken beggar, whom they despised, and yet whom they feared; for the squalid, contemptible creature might at any moment be transformed into a foe whose like there was not to be found in all the wide world for ferocity, cunning, and blood-thirsty cruelty.  The greatest Indians, chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, who were capable of deeds of the loftiest and most sublime heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or drunken good-for-nothings.  Their meaner followers had only such virtues as belong to the human wolf—­stealth, craft, tireless endurance, and the courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will fight to the death without flinching if cornered.

    Grimness of the Backwoods Character.

Moreover, the backwoodsmen were a hard people; a people who still lived in an iron age.  They did not spare themselves, nor those who were dear to them; far less would they spare their real or possible foes.  Their lives were often stern and grim; they were wonted to hardship and suffering.  In the histories or traditions of the different families there are recorded many tales of how they sacrificed themselves, and, in time of need, sacrificed others.  The mother who was a captive among the Indians might lay down her life for her child; but if she could not save it, and to stay with it forbade her own escape it was possible that she would kiss it good-by and leave it to its certain fate, while she herself, facing death at every step, fled homewards through hundreds of miles of wilderness. [Footnote:  See Hale’s “Trans-Alleghany Pioneers,” the adventures of Mrs. Inglis.  She was captured on the head-waters of the Kanawha, at the time of Braddock’s defeat.  The other inhabitants of the settlement were also taken prisoners or massacred by the savages, whom they had never wronged in any way.  She was taken to the Big Bone Lick in Kentucky.  On the way her baby was born, but she was not allowed to halt a day on account of this incident.  She left it in the Indian camp, and made her escape in company with “an old Dutch woman.”  They lived on berries and nuts for forty days, while they made their way homewards.  Both got in safely, though they separated after the old Dutch woman, in the extremity