Treaties and truces were palliatives which did not touch the real underlying trouble.

The white settlers were unflinchingly bent on seizing the land over which the Indians roamed but which they did not in any true sense own or occupy.

In return the Indians were determined at all costs and hazards to keep the men of chain and compass, and of axe and rifle, and the forest-felling settlers who followed them, out of their vast and lonely hunting-grounds.

Nothing but the actual shock of battle could decide the quarrel.

The display of overmastering, overwhelming force might have cowed the Indians; but it was not possible for the United States, or for any European power, ever to exert or display such force far beyond the limits of the settled country.