The policy of waging a more decisive war against the Indians, and the loyalists associated with them in their barbarous irruptions upon the frontier settlements, has been adverted to more than once already. General Washington had long entertained the opinion that the mere establishment of a chain of military posts along the Western and North-western frontiers would not answer the purpose; and that the only method of affording efficient protection to the inhabitants of those borders, would be to carry the war into the heart of the enemy's country. By a resolution of the 25th of February, Congress had directed the Commander-in-chief to take the most effectual means for protecting the inhabitants, and chastising the Indians for their continued depredations; and it was now his determination to put the resolve in execution, by carrying the war directly into the most populous country of the Six Nations; to cut off their settlements, destroy their crops, and inflict upon them every other mischief which time and circumstances would permit. [FN] * * * * * [FN] Letter of Washington of March 4, to Governor Clinton, and also from the same to General Gates of March 6, 1779. Those who have been accustomed to contemplate the whole race of North American aboriginals as essentially alike, viewing them all as the same roving, restless, houseless race of hunters and fishermen, without a local habitation, and with scarce a name, have widely misunderstood the Indian character, and must know but little of its varieties. They have, indeed, many traits and characteristics in common; but in other respects the moody Englishman is not more unlike his mercurial neighbor on the other side of the channel, than is the Mohawk unlike the Sioux. It is the remark of a popular writer of the day, [FN-1] that "those who are familiar with the reserved and haughty bearing of the forest tribes, cannot fail, when an opportunity of comparison is afforded, to be struck with the social air and excitable disposition which mark their prairie brethren, and so decidedly distinguish the '_gens du large_' from _les gens des feuilles,_' as the voyageurs term the different races. The Pawnees, following the buffalo in his migrations, and having always plenty of animal food to subsist upon, are a much better fed and larger race than those who find a precarious subsistence in the forest chase. While the woodland tribes, who, though not so plump in form, are of a more wiry and perhaps muscular make, have again a decided advantage in figure and gait over the '_gens du lac,_' or fishing and trapping tribes of the North-west, that pass most of their time in canoes. This difference in character and physical appearance between the different Indian races, or rather between those tribes who have such different methods of gaining a livelihood, has never been sufficiently attended to by modern authors, though it did not escape the early French writers on this country.