Speaking broadly, they have mixed but little with the English (as distinguished from the French and Spanish) invaders.

They are driven back, or die out, or retire to their own reservations; but they are not often assimilated.
Still, on every frontier, there is always a certain amount of assimilation going on, much more than is commonly admitted;[1] and whenever a French or Spanish community has been absorbed by the energetic Americans, a certain amount of Indian blood has been absorbed also.

There seems to be a chance that in one part of our country, the Indian territory, the Indians, who are continually advancing in civilization, will remain as the ground element of the population, like the Creoles in Louisiana, or the Mexicans in New Mexico.
The Americans when they became a nation continued even more successfully the work which they had begun as citizens of the several English colonies.

At the outbreak of the Revolution they still all dwelt on the seaboard, either on the coast itself or along the banks of the streams flowing into the Atlantic.

When the fight at Lexington took place they had no settlements beyond the mountain chain on our western border.