For one square mile the regular armies added to our domain, the settlers added ten,--a hundred would probably be nearer the truth.

A race of peaceful, unwarlike farmers would have been helpless before such foes as the red Indians, and no auxiliary military force could have protected them or enabled them to move westward.

Colonists fresh from the old world, no matter how thrifty, steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on the frontier; they had to settle where they were protected from the Indians by a living barrier of bold and self-reliant American borderers.[45] The west would never have been settled save for the fierce courage and the eager desire to brave danger so characteristic of the stalwart backwoodsmen.
These armed hunters, woodchoppers, and farmers were their own soldiers.
They built and manned their own forts; they did their own fighting under their own commanders.

There were no regiments of regular troops along the frontier.[46] In the event of an Indian inroad each borderer had to defend himself until there was time for them all to gather together to repel or avenge it.

Every man was accustomed to the use of arms from his childhood; when a boy was twelve years old he was given a rifle and made a fort-soldier, with a loophole where he was to stand if the station was attacked.