grants of territory which he
had never even imagined, they did not allow him to deal less splendidly
with them than such a prince ought. He had, as we know, given the Ohio
Company of Virginia a large tract of the best land beyond the Ohio
even while the French still claimed the West, and he had encouraged the
Virginians to believe they had a right to settle it and to fortify it.
But after the capture of Quebec, when the West, as well as Canada,
fell into the power of Great Britain, the English king, or rather his
ministers, began to change their minds about letting the colonists take
up lands in the Back Country, as they called it. The jealousy between
the colonies grew less, but the jealousy between them and Great Britain
grew greater; there were outbreaks here and there against her rule, and
there was discontent nearly everywhere. The colonists were disappointed
and embittered that the West should be treated as a part of Canada, by
the mother country, when it ought to have been shared among the English
provinces. The British government tried to hinder the settlement of
the whites on the Indians' lands; and though it could not keep them off
altogether, it did enough to make the savages feel that it was their
friend against its own subjects. In 1774, Parliament passed a law which
declared the whole West, between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and
below the Great Lakes, a part of the Province of Quebec. This was felt
by our colonies to be so great an injury that it was charged against
Great Britain in the Declaration of Independence, as one of the causes
for separation. It was in fact an act hostile to a people of the British
race, language, and religion, and it was meant not so much to help
the savages, as to hurt the colonists, though it did really help the
savages. When the Revolutionary War broke out a year or two later, the
British government did not scruple to make use of the cruel hatred of
the Indians against its rebellious subjects.

[Illustration: Indian war parties joining the English 047]

It set on the war parties that harried the American border, and when the
blood-stained braves came back with their plunder, their captives, and
the scalps of the men, women, and children they had murdered, they were
welcomed at the British forts as friends and allies. In certain cases,
to be sure, British officers did what they could to soften the hard fate
of the prisoners, but the British government was guilty, neverthe