efforts to keep the Indians united among
themselves and hostile to the Americans. They concluded a formal treaty
of friendship and of reciprocal guarantee with the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
Creeks, and Cherokees at Nogales, in the Choctaw country, on May 14,
1792. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Documents; Letter of Carondelet to
Duke of Alcudia, Nov. 24, 1794.] The Indians entered into this treaty at
the very time they had concluded wholly inconsistent treaties with the
Americans. On the place of the treaty the Spaniards built a fort, which
they named Fort Confederation, to perpetuate, as they hoped, the memory
of the confederation they had thus established among the Southern
Indians. By means of this fort they intended to control all the
territory enclosed between the rivers Mississippi, Yazoo, Chickasaw, and
Mobile. The Spaniards also expended large sums of money in arming the
Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were quite willing to do of
their own accord,--that is, to prevent the demarkation of the boundary
line as provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which Carondelet
reported to his Court as "insulting and pernicious to Spain, the
abrogation of which has lately been brought about by the intrigues with
the Indians." [Footnote: Draper MSS., Letter of Carondelet, New Orleans,
Sept. 25, 1795.]

Carondelet's Policy.

At the same time that the bill for these expenses was submitted for
audit to the home government the Spanish Governor also submitted his
accounts for the expenses in organizing the expedition against the
"English adventurer Bowles," and in negotiating with Wilkinson and the
other Kentucky Separatists, and also in establishing a Spanish post at
the Chickasaw Bluffs, for which he had finally obtained the permission
of the Chickasaws. The Americans of course regarded the establishment
both of the fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs and the fort at Nogales as
direct challenges; and Carondelet's accounts show that the frontiersmen
were entirely justified in their belief that the Spaniards not only
supplied the Creeks with arms and munitions of war, but actively
interfered to prevent them from keeping faith and carrying out the
treaties which they had signed. The Spaniards did not wish the Indians
to go to war unless it was necessary as a last resort. They preferred
that they should be peaceful, provided always they could prevent the
intrusion of the Americans. Carondelet wrote: "We have inspired the
Cr