art responsible;
they thought very little of the matter at all in the years which saw the
beginning of their stupendous struggle with France. But the acts of
their obscure agents on the far interior frontier were rendered
necessary and inevitable by their policy. 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.
Moreover, where the interests of the British Crown were so manifold it
was idle to expect that the Crown's advisers would treat as of much
weight the welfare of the scarcely-known tribes whom their agents had
urged to enter a contest which was hopeless except for British
assistance. 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 finally assured by a cynical
abandonment of their red allies. In short, the British, while professing
peace with the Americans, treacherously incited the Indians to war
against them; and, when it suited their own interests, they
treacherously abandoned their Indian allies to the impending ruin.
[Footnote: The ordinary American histories, often so absurdly unjust to
England, are right in their treatment of the British actions on the
frontier in 1793-94. The ordinary British historians simply ignore the
whole affair. As a type of their class, Mr. Percy Gregg may be
instanced. His "History of the United States" is a silly book; he is
often intentionally untruthful, but his chief fault is his complete
ignorance of the facts about which he is writing. It is, of course,
needless to criticise such writers as Mr. Gregg and his fellows. But it
is worth while calling attention to Mr. Goldwin Smith's "The United
States," for Mr. Goldwin Smith is a student, and must be taken
seriously. He says: "That the British government or anybody by its
authority was intriguing with the Indians against the Americans is an
assertion of which there seems to be no proof." If he will examine the
Canadian Archives, from which I have quoted, and the aut