The Winning of the West, Volume Four | Page 7

help from the United States against the Indians, in the event of hostilities, they were equally prompt to defy the United States authorities if the latter strove to obtain justice for the Indians, or if the treaties concluded by the Federal and the State authorities seemed likely to conflict. [Footnote: Do., p. 49. Letter of Benjamin Hawkins and Andrew Pickens, December 30, 1785.] The Commissioners were at first much impressed by the letters sent them by McGillivray, and the "talks" they received through the Scotch, French, and English half-breed interpreters [Footnote: Do., _e.g._, the letter of Galphin and Douzeazeaux, June 14, 1787.] from the outlandishly-named Muscogee chiefs--the Hallowing King of the War Towns, the Fat King of the White or Peace Towns, the White Bird King, the Mad Dog King, and many more. But they soon found that the Creeks were quite as much to blame as the Georgians, and were playing fast and loose with the United States, promising to enter into treaties, and then refusing to attend; their flagrant and unprovoked breaches of faith causing intense anger and mortification to the Commissioners, whose patient efforts to serve them were so ill rewarded. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., p. 74, September 26, 1789.] Moreover, to offset the Indian complaints of lands taken from them under fraudulent treaties, the Georgians submitted lists [Footnote: Do., p. 77, October 5, 1789.] of hundreds of whites and blacks killed, wounded, or captured, and of thousands of horses, horned cattle, and hogs butchered or driven off by Indian war parties. The puzzled Commissioners having at first been inclined to place the blame of the failure of peace negotiations on the Georgians, next shifted the responsibility to McGillivray, reporting that the Creeks were strongly in favor of peace. The event proved that they were in error; for after McGillivray and his fellow chiefs had come to New York, in the summer of 1790, and concluded a solemn treaty of peace, the Indians whom they nominally represented refused to be bound by it in any way, and continued without a change their war of rapine and murder.
The Indians as Much to Blame as the Whites.
In truth the red men were as little disposed as the white to accept a peace on any terms that were possible. The Secretary of War, who knew nothing of Indians by actual contact, wrote that it would be indeed pleasing "to a philosophic mind to reflect that, instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population ... we had imparted our knowledge of cultivation and the arts to the aboriginals of the country," thus preserving and civilizing them [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., pp. 53, 57, 60, 77, 79, 81, etc.]; and the public men who represented districts remote from the frontier shared these views of large, though vague, beneficence. But neither the white frontiersmen nor their red antagonists possessed "philosophic minds." They represented two stages of progress, ages apart; and it would have needed many centuries to bring the lower to the level of the higher. Both sides recognized the fact that their interests were incompatible; and that the question of their clashing rights had to be settled by the strong hand.
The Trouble Most Serious in the North.
In the Northwest matters culminated sooner than in the Southwest. The Georgians, and the settlers along the Tennessee and Cumberland, were harassed rather than seriously menaced by the Creek war parties; but in the north the more dangerous Indians of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes gathered in bodies so large as fairly to deserve the name of armies. Moreover, the pressure of the white advance was far heavier in the north. The pioneers who settled in the Ohio basin were many times as numerous as those who settled on the lands west of the Oconee and north of the Cumberland, and were fed from States much more populous. The advance was stronger, the resistance more desperate; naturally the open break occurred where the strain was most intense.
There was fierce border warfare in the south. In the north there were regular campaigns carried on, and pitched battles fought, between Federal armies as large as those commanded by Washington at Trenton or Greene at Eutaw Springs, and bodies of Indian warriors more numerous than had ever yet appeared on any single field.
The United States Government Driven to War.
The newly created Government of the United States was very reluctant to make formal war on the northwestern Indians. Not only were President Washington and the National Congress honorably desirous of peace, but they were hampered for funds, and dreaded any extra expense. Nevertheless they were forced into war. Throughout the years 1789 and 1790 an increasing volume of appeals for help came from the frontier countries. The governor