These Red Indians were very brave but savage and treacherous, and they bitterly resented the coming of strangers into their land.
The early settlers lived in constant dread of attack and massacre, and they were always armed when they cultivated their clearings in the forests or ventured further and further afield into the undiscovered country of the West.
The conveyances used by the colonists of North America were large, hooded wagons, very much like those to be seen in Africa, and in these prairie schooners, as they were sometimes called, the pioneers carried their wives and their children out into the wilderness.
AMERICAN TROTTER.
The wagons were drawn by teams of strong horses, mules, or oxen, and large numbers of emigrants generally travelled together. This was necessary, as small parties would almost certainly have been attacked by the Indians.
Even when they did travel in company the colonists were not always safe, and a man who went to the West in 1850 tells a terrible story of his adventures.
