They were much better stuff out of which to make a free, self-governing nation, and they were much better able to hold their own in the world, and to shape their own destiny; but they were far less pleasant people to govern.

To this day the very virtues of the pioneers--not to speak of their faults--make it almost impossible for them to get on with an ordinary army officer, accustomed as he is to rule absolutely, though justly and with a sort of severe kindness.

Army officers on the frontier--especially when put in charge of Indian reservations or of French or Spanish communities--have almost always been more or less at swords-points with the stubborn, cross-grained pioneers.

The borderers are usually as suspicious as they are independent, and their self-sufficiency and self-reliance often degenerate into mere lawlessness and defiance of all restraint.
The Regular Officers Side with the French against the Americans.
The Federal officers in the backwoods north of the Ohio got on badly with the backwoodsmen.

Harmar took the side of the French Creoles, and warmly denounced the acts of the frontiersmen who had come in among them.