impotence.

The coming on of the Revolution produced no immediate effects in
the West. The meaning of the occurrences round Boston was but
slowly grasped by the frontier folk. There was little indeed that
the Westerners could do to help the cause of the eastern
patriots, and most of them, if left alone, would have been only
distant spectators of the conflict. But orders given to the
British agents and commanders called for the ravaging of the
trans-Alleghany country; and as a consequence the West became an
important theater of hostilities.

The British agents had no troops with which to undertake military
operations on a considerable scale, but they had one great
resource--the Indians--and this they used with a reckless
disregard of all considerations of humanity. In the summer of
1776 the Cherokees were furnished with fifty horse-loads of
ammunition and were turned loose upon the back country of Georgia
and the Carolinas. Other tribes were prompted to depredations
farther north. White, half-breed, and Indian agents went through
the forests inciting the natives to deeds of horror; prices were
fixed on scalps--and it is significant of the temper of these
agents that a woman's scalp was paid for as readily as a man's.

In every corner of the wilderness the bloody scenes of Pontiac's
war were now reenacted. Bands of savages lurked about the
settlements, ready to attack at any unguarded moment; and
wherever the thin blue smoke of a settler's cabin rose, prowlers
lay in wait. A woman might not safely go a hundred yards to milk
a cow, or a man lead a horse to water. The farmer carried a gun