long
considered them as legal prey, and too often treated them as the brute
animals of the forest. Expelled from the coasts, and dispossessed of
their hunting grounds, they had been gradually driven westward, until
they had too much cause to apprehend that the cupidity of their invaders
would be satisfied only with their utter extermination. "The red men are
melting," to borrow the expressive metaphor of a celebrated Miami chief
of the last century, "like snow before the sun." Indeed, it is
melancholy to reflect, that the aborigines of both continents of America
have, from their first intercourse with Europeans or their descendants,
experienced nothing but fraud, spoliation, cruelty, and ingratitude.

_Major-General Brock to Sir George Prevost_.

YORK, September 28, 1812.

I have been honored with your excellency's dispatch, dated the
14th instant.[93] I shall suspend, under the latitude left by
your excellency to my discretion, the evacuation of Fort
Detroit. Such a measure would most probably be followed by the
total extinction of the population on that side of the river,
or the Indians, aware of our weakness and inability to carry
on active warfare, would only think of entering into terms
with the enemy. The Indians, since the Miami affair, in 1793,
have been extremely suspicious of our conduct; but the violent
wrongs committed by the Americans on their territory, have
rendered it an act of policy with them to disguise their
sentiments. Could they be persuaded that a peace between the
belligerents would take place, without admitting their claim
to an extensive tract of country, fraudulently usurped from
them, and opposing a frontier to the present unbounded views
of the Americans, I am satisfied in my own mind that they
would immediately compromise with the enemy. I cannot conceive
a connection so likely to lead to more awful consequences.

If we can maintain ourselves at Niagara, and keep the
communication to Montreal open, the Americans can only subdue
the Indians by craft, which we ought to be prepared to see
exerted to the utmost. The enmity of the Indians is now at its
height, and it will require much management and large bribes
to effect a change in their policy; but the moment they are
convinced that we either want the means to prosecute the war
with spirit, or are negociating a separate peace, th