MSS., Washington Papers, Secretary of War to the President, July 28, and Aug.
5, 1792.] Of course the adoption of such a measure would have amounted to putting a premium on murder and treachery.
Odd Manifestations of Particularistic Feeling.
If the Easterners were insensible to the Western need for a vigorous Indian war, many of the Westerners showed as little appreciation of the necessity for any Indian war which did not immediately concern themselves.

Individual Kentuckians, individual colonels and captains of the Kentucky militia, were always ready to march to the help of the Tennesseeans against the Southern Indians; but the highest officials of Kentucky were almost as anxious as the Federal authorities to prevent any war save that with the tribes northwest of the Ohio.

One of the Kentucky senators, Brown, in writing to the Governor, Isaac Shelby, laid particular stress upon the fact that nothing but the most urgent necessity could justify a war with the Southern Indians.

[Footnote: Shelby MSS., J.Brown to Isaac Shelby, Philadelphia, June 2, 1793.] Shelby himself sympathized with this feeling.

He knew what an Indian war was, for he had owed his election largely to his record as an Indian fighter and to the confidence the Kentuckians felt in his power to protect them from their red foes.