The Winning of the West, Volume Four | Page 7

deeds of the Upper Town warriors, and demanded
the immediate surrender of the militia who had killed the Lower Town
people--to the huge indignation of the Governor of Georgia. [Footnote:
American State Papers, Vol. IV., 31, 32, 33. Letter of Governor
Matthews, August 4, 1787, etc.]
Difficulties of the Federal Treaty-Makers.
The United States Commissioners were angered by the lawless greed
with which the Georgians grasped at the Indian lands; and they soon
found that though the Georgians were always ready to clamor for 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