e only after bloodshed,
had petitioned him for fifty barrels of gunpowder and bullets to
correspond, and that he had ordered the Governor of Pensacola to furnish
McGillivray, their chief, these munitions of war, with all possible
secrecy and caution, so that it should not become known. [Footnote:
_Do_., Miro to Galvez, June 28, 1786, "que summistrase estas municiones
a McGillivray Jefe principal to las Talapuches con toda la reserve y
cantata posible de modo que ne se transiendiese la mano de este
socorro."] The Governor of Pensacola shortly afterwards related the
satisfaction the Creeks felt at receiving the powder and lead, and added
that he would have to furnish them additional supplies from time to
time, as the war progressed, and that he would exercise every precaution
so that the Americans might have no "just cause of complaint."
[Footnote: _Do_., "sera necessaria la mayor precaucion, y mana para
contenerle cinendose a la suministracion de polvora, balas y efectos de
treta con la cantata posible para no dar a los Americanos justos motivos
de gueya."] There is an unconscious and somewhat gruesome humor in this
official belief that the Americans could have "no just cause" for anger
so long as the Spaniards' treachery was concealed.

Spanish Duplicity.

Throughout these years the Spaniards thus secretly supplied the Creeks
with the means of waging war on the Americans, claiming all the time
that the Creeks were their vassals and that the land occupied by the
southern Indians generally belonged to Spain and not to the United
States. [Footnote: _Do_.] They also kept their envoys busy among the
Chickasaws, Choctaws, and even the Cherokees.

In fact, until the conclusion of Pinckney's treaty, the Spaniards of
Louisiana pursued as a settled policy this plan of inciting the Indians
to war against the Americans. Generally they confined themselves to
secretly furnishing the savages with guns, powder, and lead, and
endeavoring to unite the tribes in a league; but on several occasions
they openly gave them arms, when they were forced to act hurriedly. As
late as 1794 the Flemish Baron de Carondelet, a devoted servant of
Spain, and one of the most determined enemies of the Americans,
instructed his lieutenants to fit out war parties of Chickasaws, Creeks,
and Cherokees, to harass a fort the Americans had built near the mouth
of the Ohio. Carondelet wrote to the Home Government that the Indians
formed the best defence on