at the Indians were the natural foes of
the American people, and therefore the natural allies of the British
Government. They had constantly to fear the advance of the Americans,
while from the fur traders, Indian agents, and army officers who alone
represented Britain, they had nothing but coveted treasures of every
kind to expect. They seemed tools forged for the hands of the royal
commanders, whose own people lay far beyond the reach of reprisals in
kind; and it was perhaps too much to expect that in that age such tools
should not be used.[15] We had less temptation to employ them, less
means wherewith to pay them, and more cause to be hostile to and dread
them; and moreover our skirts are not quite clear in the matter, after
all, for we more than once showed a tendency to bid for their support.

But, after all is said, the fact remains that we have to deal, not with
what, under other circumstances, the Americans _might_ have done,
but with what the British actually _did;_ and for this there can be
many apologies, but no sufficient excuse. When the commissioners to the
southern Indians wrote to Lord George Germain, "we have been
indefatigable in our endeavors to keep up a constant succession of
parties of Indians to annoy the rebels," the writers must have well
known, what the king's ministers should also have made it their business
to know, that the war-parties whom they thus boasted of continually
sending against the settlements directed their efforts mainly, indeed
almost exclusively, not against bodies of armed men, but against the
husbandmen as they unsuspectingly tilled the fields, and against the
women and children who cowered helplessly in the log-cabins.[16] All men
knew that the prisoners who fell into Indian hands, of whatever age or
sex, often suffered a fate hideous and revolting beyond belief and
beyond description. Such a letter as that quoted above makes the
advisers of King George the Third directly responsible for the manifold
and frightful crimes of their red allies.

It is small wonder that such a contest should have roused in the breasts
of the frontiersmen not only ruthless and undying abhorrence of the
Indians, but also a bitterly vindictive feeling of hostility towards
Great Britain; a feeling that was all-powerful for a generation
afterwards, and traces of which linger even to the present day.
Moreover, the Indian forays, in some ways, damaged the loyalist cause.
The savages had received str