of the English was but a thin mask
to conceal the greed of men who had no other desire than to rob him of
his land. During the latter years of the war, after the conquest of
Canada placed the allies of France under the heavy hand of Amherst and
opened the way to actual settlement, it became clear that an ominous
spirit of unrest was spreading throughout all the Northwest. It was
precisely to guard against the danger of an Indian uprising, which in
fact came to pass in the formidable conspiracy of Pontiac, that the
Board of Trade formulated as early as 1761 the policy which found
expression in the famous Proclamation of October 7, 1763. The
Proclamation announced the intention of the English Government to take
exclusive control of Indian relations and Western settlement. "For the
present," all territory west of the Alleghanies, from the new provinces
of Florida on the south to Canada on the north, was to be "reserved to
the Indians." Governors were forbidden to grant land there. Those who
had already settled within reserved territory were required to remove
forthwith; and every Indian trader was bound to give security for
observing such rules as the Imperial Government might establish. It was
the intention of the ministers, although unfortunately not so expressed
in the Proclamation, to open the reserved lands to settlement as soon as
Indian titles could be justly extinguished. In accordance with this
intention, the Government negotiated the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768,
by which the Six Nations ceded to the Crown their rights to lands south
of the Ohio; and both before and after that event it was seriously
concerned with projects for new colonies in the interior. The most
famous of these projects was that of the Vandalia Colony, for which a
royal grant was about to be executed in 1775 when the promoters were
requested to "wait ... until hostilities ... between Great Britain and
the United Colonies should cease."

Undoubtedly the Proclamation of 1763 was primarily a measure of
defense; but even if strictly enforced, which was found to be quite
impossible in fact, it could not alone have secured unbroken peace on
the frontier. Primitive in his instincts and treacherous in his nature,
the Indian harbored in his vengeful heart the rankling memory of too
many grievances, was too easily swayed by his ancient but now humiliated
French allies, to be held in check without a show of force to back the
most just and wisely admin