s fraudulently procured by the whites, or fraudulently
entered into and violated by the Indians; encroachments by white
settlers on Indian lands, and bloody Indian forays among the peaceful
settlements. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 73, pp. 7, 343. Gazette of the State
of Georgia, Aug. 5, 1784, May 25, June 1, Nov. 2, Nov. 30, 1786.]

The more far-sighted and resolute among all the Indians, northern and
southern, began to strive for a general union against the Americans.
[Footnote: _Do_., No. 20, pp. 321 and 459; No. 18, p. 140; No. 12, vol.
ii., June 30. 1786.] In 1786 the northwestern Indians almost formed such
a union. Two thousand warriors gathered at the Shawnee towns and agreed
to take up the hatchet against the Americans; British agents were
present at the council; and even before the council was held, war
parties were bringing into the Shawnee towns the scalps of American
settlers, and prisoners, both men and women, who were burned at the
stake. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 60, p. 277, Sept. 13, 1786.] But the
jealousy and irresolution of the tribes prevented the actual formation
of a league.

The Federal Government still feebly hoped for peace; and in the vain
endeavors to avoid irritating the Indians forbade all hostile
expeditions into the Indian country--though these expeditions offered
the one hope of subduing the savages and preventing their inroads. By
1786 the settlers generally, including all their leaders, such as Clark,
[Footnote: _Do_., No. 50, p. 279. Clark to R. H. Lee.] had become
convinced that the treaties were utterly futile, and that the only right
policy was one of resolute war.

The War Inevitable.

In truth the war was unavoidable. The claims and desires of the two
parties were irreconcilable. Treaties and truces were palliatives which
did not touch the real underlying trouble. The white settlers were
unflinchingly bent on seizing the land over which the Indians roamed but
which they did not in any true sense own or occupy. In return the
Indians were determined at all costs and hazards to keep the men of
chain and compass, and of axe and rifle, and the forest-felling settlers
who followed them, out of their vast and lonely hunting-grounds. Nothing
but the actual shock of battle could decide the quarrel. The display of
overmastering, overwhelming force might have cowed the Indians; but it
was not possible for the United States, or for any European power, ever
to exert or display such force far be