Their treatment both of the Indians, whom they professed to protect, and of the Americans, with whom they professed to be friendly, forms one of the darkest pages in the annals of the British in America.

America is bound scrupulously to respect the rights of the weak; but she is no less bound to make stalwart insistance on her own rights as against the strong.

The count against the British on the Northwestern frontier is, not that they insisted on their rights, but that they were guilty of treachery to both friend and foe.

The success of the British was incompatible with the good of mankind in general, and of the English-speaking races in particular; for they strove to prop up savagery, and to bar the westward march of the settler-folk whose destiny it was…

Their fault lay in their aiding and encouraging savages in a warfare which was necessarily horrible; and still more in their repeated breaches of faith.

To encourage the Indians to hold their own against the Americans, and to keep back the settlers, meant to encourage a war of savagery against the border vanguard of white civilization; and such a war was sure to teem with fearful deeds.

The British statesmen were engaged in gigantic schemes of warfare and diplomacy; and to them the Indians and the frontiersmen alike were pawns on a great chessboard, to be sacrificed whenever necessary.

When the British authorities deemed it likely that there would be war with America, the tribes were incited to take up the hatchet; when there seemed a chance of peace with America the deeds of the tribes were disowned; and peace was…

It emphasizes the fact that at this time there was throughout the West no very strong feeling on the subject of slavery, and what feeling there was, was if anything hostile.

The adventurous backwoods farmers who composed the great mass of the population in Tennessee, as elsewhere among and west of the Alleghanies, were not a slave-owning people, in the sense that the planters of the seaboard were.

Master and man chopped and ploughed and reaped and builded side by side, and even the leaders of the community, the militia generals, the legislators, and the judges, often did their share of farm work, and prided themselves upon their…

The one thing they prized beyond all others was their personal freedom, the right of the individual to do whatsoever he saw fit.

They were by no means entirely logical, but they did see and feel that slavery was abhorrent, and that it was utterly inconsistent with the theories of their own social and governmental life.

As yet there was no thought of treating slavery as a sacred institution, the righteousness of which must not be questioned.

The slaveholders were not interfered with until they gradually grew numerous enough and powerful enough to set the tone of thought, and make it impossible to root out slavery save by outside action.

No one but a man of great tact and firmness could have preserved as much order among the frontiersmen as Blount preserved.

One of the characteristics of all the leading frontiersmen was not only the way in which they combined business enterprises with their work as Government officials and as Indian fighters, but the readiness with which they turned from one…

It illustrates forcibly the fact that under the actual conditions of settlement wars were inevitable; for if it is admitted that the land of the Indians had to be taken and that the continent had to be settled by white men, it must be…

The whites might be to blame in some cases, and the Indians in others; but under no combination of circumstances was it possible to obtain possession of the country save as the result of war, or of a peace obtained by the fear of war.

Any peace which did not surrender the land was sure in the end to be broken by the whites; and a peace which did surrender the land would be broken by the Indians.

The whites contemptuously disregarded this treaty and seized the lands which it guaranteed to the Indians, being themselves the aggressors, and paying no heed to the plighted word of the Government, while the Government itself was too weak…

Yet like every other man acquainted by actual experience with frontier life and Indian warfare, he knew the folly of defensive war against Indians.

Blount told them plainly that he had the utmost difficulty in restraining the whites from taking vengeance for the numerous murders committed on the settlers, and warned them that if they wished to avert a war which would fall upon both…

He came out with every hope and belief that he could make a permanent treaty; but after having been some time on the border he was obliged to admit that there was no chance of bringing about even a truce, and that the nominal peace that…

He continued: "While a part, and that the ostensible ruling part, of a nation affect to be at, and I believe really are for, peace, and the more active young men are frequently killing people and stealing horses, it is extremely difficult…