Moreover, a regular army formed a weapon with a temper tried and known;
whereas a militia force was the most brittle of swords which might give
one true stroke, or might fly into splinters at the first slight blow.
Regulars were the only troops who could be trusted to wear out their
foes in a succession of weary and hard-fought campaigns.
The best backwoods fighters, however, such men as Kenton and Brady had
in their scout companies, were much superior to the regulars, and were
able to meet the Indians on at least equal terms. But there were only a
very few such men; and they were too impatient of discipline to be
embodied in an army. The bulk of the frontier militia consisted of men
who were better riflemen than the regulars and often physically abler,
but who were otherwise in every military sense inferior, possessing
their defects, sometimes in an accentuated form, and not possessing
their compensating virtues. Like the regulars, these militia fought the
Indians at a terrible disadvantage. A defeat for either meant murderous
slaughter; for whereas the trained Indian fighters fought or fled each
for himself, the ordinary troops huddled together in a mass, an easy
mark for their savage foes.
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