ps with which to undertake military
operations on a considerable scale, but they had one great resource--the
Indians--and this they used with a reckless disregard of all
considerations of humanity. In the summer of 1776 the Cherokees were
furnished with fifty horse-loads of ammunition and were turned loose
upon the back country of Georgia and the Carolinas. Other tribes were
prompted to depredations farther north. White, half-breed, and Indian
agents went through the forests inciting the natives to deeds of horror;
prices were fixed on scalps--and it is significant of the temper of
these agents that a woman's scalp was paid for as readily as a man's.

In every corner of the wilderness the bloody scenes of Pontiac's war
were now reenacted. Bands of savages lurked about the settlements, ready
to attack at any unguarded moment; and wherever the thin blue smoke of a
settler's cabin rose, prowlers lay in wait. A woman might not safely
go a hundred yards to milk a cow, or a man lead a horse to water.
The farmer carried a gun strapped to his side as he ploughed, and he
scarcely dared venture into the woods for the winter's supply of fuel
and game. Hardly a day passed on which a riderless horse did not come
galloping into some lonely clearing, telling of afresh tragedy on the
trail.

The rousing of the Indians against the frontiersmen was an odious
act. The people of the back country were in not the slightest degree
responsible for the revolt against British authority in the East. They
were non-combatants, and no amount of success in sweeping them from
their homes could affect the larger outcome. The crowning villainy of
this shameful policy was the turning of the redskins loose to prey upon
helpless women and children.

The responsibility for this inhumanity must be borne in some degree
by the government of George III. "God and nature," wrote the Earl
of Suffolk piously, "hath put into our hands the scalping-knife and
tomahawk, to torture them into unconditional submission." But the fault
lay chiefly with the British officers at the western posts--most of
all, with Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton at Detroit. Probably no British
representative in America was on better terms with the natives. He drank
with them, sang war-songs with them, and received them with open arms
when they came in from the forests with the scalps of white men dangling
at their belts. A great council on the banks of the Detroit in June,
1778, was duly open