ure westward found voice in a common demand for more land. The pioneer was treading on the heels of the Indian.

Two Indian wars broke out almost at the same time-with a confederation of tribes in the Northwest, with the Creeks and Seminoles of the Southwest, constituting, as the people of the West thought, the principal part of the war of 1812. They would have broken out had that war never occurred. The wave of population was dashing against Indian barriers, and there could be only one result. Immigration westward had now overrun what were thought to be the best lands made accessible by Wayne's treaty of 1795. Twenty years had passed. A new generation demanded cheap lands.

Hundreds of battles have been fought, surpassing in fierceness, and in the number and the skill of participants, the battle of Tippecanoe. Yet because of its effects on the development of the West it lingers in the memory of the people like Lexington and Fort Sumter. Another Pontiac had planned to sweep the whites from the Northwest. Tecumseh, and his brother The Prophet, had conceived a more daring plot-to unite all the tribes, North and South, and swoop down upon the settlements at one time. Harrison's victory gave the Northwest to new settlers. For the settler in the Southwest Jackson performed a similar service. His campaigns left a trail of Indian blood. Henceforth no tribe dared commit hostilities east of the great river. Harrison and Jackson had won a popularity surpassing

J

The Indian Wars

Indian

that of Washington or Franklin. When the war of 1812 was over, and the treaty of Ghent was signed, and the country could calmly reflect on its gains and losses, the victories of Harrison and Jackson, which opened the West to settlement, outweighed, in the opinion of the people living in the great valley, all the victories of the Americans on the sea. The popularity of the two soldiers took deep root in public sentiment, and, growing stronger as the years displayed prosperous commonwealths as the fruit of their victories, at last culminated in the election of the "Hero of New Orleans," and, later, the "Hero of Tippecanoe,' to the Presidency.

By a provision of the national Constitution, a

census of the people is taken every ten years. The

movement of the frontier westward has thus been regularly recorded. Its position from decade to decade suggests the waves of some mighty sea, each in succession leaping further to the West. Every wave has ingulfed once powerful tribes. From frontier to frontier stretches a succession of battlefields. Each decade has had its Indian wars, its victories, and its popular heroes. Harrison and Jackson were the first of their kind. Within ten years of their victories, the West stretched far away beyond the Mississippi; many of the tribes with whom they fought were transferred to the Indian country, and an ample region east of the

* For typical resolutions on General Harrison, see those of the Kentucky Legislature, January 13, 1812.

river was opened to peaceful settlement. Population continued to converge upon St. Louis, even after these victories on the Thames and the Alabama. Within five years of the battle of Tippecanoe, a population poured into Indiana sufficient to ask for admission as a State. Congress made a grant of school-lands equally generous with that to Ohio, and appropriated an entire township exclusively for the support of higher education in "a seminary for learning"-the beginning of appropriations of land for State universities. Like the offer to Ohio, this one to Indiana was subject to the will of the convention. The constitution adopted was the first in the country to make it obligatory on the Legislature "to provide by law for a general system of education, ascending in a regular graduation from township schools to a State university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all."

In 1817 the Territory of Mississippi was divided. The eastern portion was organized as the Territory of Alabama, and the people of the western portion were authorized to form a State government republican in form, and complying with that part of the Ordinance of 1787 applicable to the Southwest. This meant a slave constitution. The free navigation of the Mississippi was guaranteed to all the inhabitants of the United States. The State was admitted on the 10th of December. Two years and a day later Alabama was admitted on the same terms. In this State schoollands were reserved as in Ohio.