The Old Northwest | Page 9

for already Pontiac's rebellion had been in progress four months, and the entire back country was aflame. It must be confessed that a continental wilderness swarming with murderous savages was an inheritance whose aspect was by no means altogether pleasing to the English mind.
The easiest solution of the difficulty was to let things take their course. Let seaboard populations spread at will over the new lands; let them carry on trade in their own way, and make whatever arrangements with the native tribes they desire. Colonies such as Virginia and New York, which had extensive western claims, would have been glad to see this plan adopted. Strong objections, however, were raised. Colonies which had no western claims feared the effects of the advantages which their more fortunate neighbors would enjoy. Men who had invested heavily in lands lying west of the mountains felt that their returns would be diminished and delayed if the back country were thrown open to settlers. Some people thought that the Indians had a moral right to protection against wholesale white invasion of their hunting-grounds, and many considered it expedient, at all events, to offer such protection.
After all, however, it was the King and his ministers who had it in their power to settle the question; and from their point of view it was desirable to keep the western territories as much as possible apart from the older colonies, and to regulate, with farsighted policy, their settlement and trade. Eventually, it was believed, the territories would be cut into new colonies; and experience with the seaboard dependencies was already such as to suggest the desirability of having the future settlements more completely under government control from the beginning.
After due consideration, King George and his ministers made known their policy on October 7, 1763, in a comprehensive proclamation. The first subject dealt with was government. Four new provinces-- "Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada"*--were set up in the ceded territories, and their populations were guaranteed all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants of the older colonies. The Mississippi Valley, however, was included in no one of these provinces; and, curiously, there was no provision whatever for the government of the French settlements lying within it. The number and size of these settlements were underestimated, and apparently it was supposed that all the habitants and soldiers would avail themselves of their privilege of withdrawing from the ceded territories.
* The Proclamation of 1763 drew the boundaries of "four distinct and separate governments." Grenada was to include the island of that name, together with the Grenadines. Dominico, St. Vincent, and Tobago. The Floridas lay south of the bounds of Georgia and east of the Mississippi River. The Apalachicola River was to be the dividing line between East and West Florida. Quebec included the modern province of that name and that part of Ontario lying north of a line drawn from Lake Nipissing to the point where the forty-fifth parallel intersects the St. Lawrence River.
The disposition made of the great rectangular area bounded by the Alleghanies, the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the Gulf, was fairly startling. With fine disregard of the chartered claims of the seaboard colonies and of the rights of pioneers already settled on frontier farms, the whole was erected into an Indian reserve. No "loving subject" might purchase land or settle in the territory without special license; present residents should "forthwith remove themselves"; trade should be carried on only by permit and under close surveillance; officers were to be stationed among the tribes to preserve friendly relations and to apprehend fugitives from colonial justice.
The objects of this drastic scheme were never clearly stated. Franklin believed that the main purpose was to conciliate the Indians. Washington agreed with him. Later historians have generally thought that what the English Government had chiefly in mind was to limit the bounds of the seaboard colonies, with a view to preserving imperial control over colonial affairs. Very likely both of these motives weighed heavily in the decision. At all events, Lord Hillsborough, who presided over the meetings of the Lords of Trade when the proclamation was discussed, subsequently wrote that the "capital object" of the Government's policy was to confine the colonies so that they should be kept in easy reach of British trade and of the authority necessary to keep them in due subordination to the mother country, and he added that the extension of the fur trade depended "entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in the possession of their hunting-grounds."*
* But as Lord Hillsborough had just taken office and adopted bodily a policy formulated by his predecessor, he is none too good an authority. See Alvord's "Mississippi Valley in British Politics," vol. I, pp. 203-4.
It does not follow that the King and his advisers intended that the territory