countrymen with determined ferocity.
Girty won the widest fame on the border by his cunning and cruelty; but
he was really a less able foe than the two others. McKee in particular
showed himself a fairly good commander of Indians and irregular troops;
as did likewise an Englishman named Caldwell, and two French partisans,
De Quindre and Lamothe, who were hearty supporters of the British.

The British Begin a War of Extermination.

Hamilton and his subordinates, both red and white, were engaged in what
was essentially an effort to exterminate the borderers. They were not
endeavoring merely to defeat the armed bodies of the enemy. They were
explicitly bidden by those in supreme command to push back the frontier,
to expel the settlers from the country. Hamilton himself had been
ordered by his immediate official superior to assail the borders of
Pennsylvania and Virginia with his savages, to destroy the crops and
buildings of the settlers who had advanced beyond the mountains, and to
give to his Indian allies,--the Hurons, Shawnees, and other tribes,--all
the land of which they thus took possession. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS.
Haldimand to Hamilton, August 6, 1778.] With such allies as Hamilton
had this order was tantamount to proclaiming a war of extermination,
waged with appalling and horrible cruelty against the settlers, of all
ages and sexes. It brings out in bold relief the fact that in the west
the war of the Revolution was an effort on the part of Great Britain to
stop the westward growth of the English race in America, and to keep the
region beyond the Alleghanies as a region where only savages should
dwell.

All the Northwestern Tribes go to War.

All through the winter of '76-77 the northwestern Indians were preparing
to take up the tomahawk. Runners were sent through the leafless, frozen
woods from one to another of their winter camps. In each bleak, frail
village, each snow-hidden cluster of bark wigwams, the painted,
half-naked warriors danced the war dance, and sang the war song, beating
the ground with their war clubs and keeping time with their feet to the
rhythmic chant as they moved in rings round the peeled post, into which
they struck their hatchets. The hereditary sachems, the peace chiefs,
could no longer control the young men. The braves made ready their
weapons and battle gear; their bodies were painted red and black, the
plumes of the war eagle were braided into their long scalp locks,