Doubtless this estimate, made under the sting of defeat, was too harsh; and it was even more applicable to the forced levies of militia than to the Federal soldiers; but the shortcomings of the regular troops were sufficiently serious to need no exaggeration.  Their own officers were far from pleased with the recruits they got.

To the younger officers, with a taste for sport, the life beyond the Ohio was delightful.  The climate was pleasant, the country beautiful, the water was clear as crystal, and game abounded.  In hard weather the troops lived on salt beef; but at other times their daily rations were two pounds of turkey or venison, or a pound and a half of bear meat or buffalo beef.  Yet this game was supplied by hired hunters, not by the soldiers themselves.  One of the officers wrote that he had to keep his troops practising steadily at a target, for they were incompetent to meet an enemy with the musket; they could not kill in a week enough game to last them a day. [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS., No. 150; Doughty’s Letter, March 15, 1786; also, November 30, 1785.] It was almost impossible to train such troops, in a limited number of months or years, so as to enable them to meet their forest foes on equal terms.  The discipline to which they were accustomed was admirably fitted for warfare in the open; but it was not suited for warfare in the woods.  They had to learn even the use of their fire-arms with painful labor.  It was merely hopeless to try to teach them to fight Indian fashion, all scattering out for themselves, and each taking a tree trunk, and trying to slay an individual enemy.  They were too clumsy; they utterly lacked the wild-creature qualities proper to the men of the wilderness, the men who inherited wolf-cunning and panther-stealth from countless generations, who bought bare life itself only at the price of never-ceasing watchfulness, craft, and ferocity.

    The Regulars Superior to the Militia.

The regulars were certainly not ideal troops with which to oppose such foes; but they were the best attainable at that time.  They possessed traits which were lacking in even the best of the frontier militia; and most of the militia fell far short of the best.  When properly trained the regulars could be trusted to persevere through a campaign; whereas the militia were sure to disband if kept out for any length of time.  Moreover, a regular army formed a weapon with a temper tried and known; whereas a militia force was the most brittle of swords which might give one true stroke, or might fly into splinters at the first slight blow.  Regulars were the only troops who could be trusted to wear out their foes in a succession of weary and hard-fought campaigns.