Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 3).djvu/50

46 addition to the bloody story told by crude implements of war, of

In certain instances, great piles of human bones are found at strategic revetment angles where heaviest attack was made and stoutest resistance encountered. Here bones are sometimes found pierced by death-dealing arrow-heads. What power hurled the flints of these warriors of prehistoric days? The Indian legend, that they were giants in strength, has been easily believed. Nowhere else on the continent are found such forts as were built by these ancient defenders of the Central West.

Throughout the eighteenth century this territory was a continual battle-ground. To it, both France and England, in turn, clung with equal determination, and both tried the foolish experiment of attempting to win it back, when once it was lost, by means of the Indians who made it their lair.

When the first explorers entered the West, early in the eighteenth century, it was found to be the princely hunting-ground of the Iroquois, better known as the