Frontier Warfare Quotes

On the fourth day of July following, a party of about two hundred Indians attacked Boonsborough, killed one man, and wounded two.

If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them.

All citizens of Colorado, either individually or in such parties as they may organize, are to go in pursuit of all hostile Indians on the plains, scrupulously avoiding those who have responded to my call to rendezvous at the points indicated; also, to kill and destroy as enemies of the country, wherever they may be found, all such hostile Indians.

If you were a U.S. Cavalry guy and you thought you were going to be captured by the Apaches, you might kill yourself. If they were with their wives and they thought they were going to be captured, they would shoot their wives for fear of the Apaches getting them.

The Indians are still winning the battle against the white men, but sooner or later, the white guy will win.

The Indians began to be troublesome all around me, killing and wounding cattle, stealing horses, and threatening to attack us. I was obliged to make campaigns against them and punish them.

On the Northwest frontier of India (today’s Pakistan), Pashtun warriors would usually castrate and behead captives, whereas the British took few prisoners and very few indeed if there was no Political Agent about.

The removal of the British after the American Revolution opened the floodgates of paramilitary ranger power. For instance, in 1786, ranger units, including one that included Daniel Boone, attacked a number of friendly Shawnee towns along the Mad River.