ood that there had been any change of
attitude; nor did it make any practical difference, for, whatever the
theory might be, the lands had eventually to be won, partly by whipping
the savages in fight, partly by making it better worth their while to
remain at peace than to go to war.

Knox and the Treaties.

The Federal officials under whose authority these treaties were made had
no idea of the complexity of the problem. In 1789 the Secretary of War,
the New Englander Knox, solemnly reported to the President that, if the
treaties were only observed and the Indians conciliated, they would
become attached to the United States, and the expense of managing them,
for the next half-century, would be only some fifteen thousand dollars a
year. [Footnote: American State Papers, Vol. IV., Indian Affairs, I., p.
13.] He probably represented, not unfairly, the ordinary Eastern view of
the matter. He had not the slightest idea of the rate at which the
settlements were increasing, though he expected that tracts of Indian
territory would from time to time be acquired. He made no allowance for
a growth so rapid that within the half-century six or eight populous
States were to stand within the Indian-owned wilderness of his day. He
utterly failed to grasp the central features of the situation, which
were that the settlers needed the land, and were bound to have it,
within a few years; and that the Indians would not give it up, under no
matter what treaty, without an appeal to arms.

Treaties with the Southern Indians.

In the South the United States Commissioners, in endeavoring to conclude
treaties with the Creeks and Cherokees, had been continually hampered by
the attitude of Georgia and the Franklin frontiersmen. The Franklin men
made war and peace with the Cherokees just as they chose, and utterly
refused to be bound by the treaties concluded on behalf of the United
States. Georgia played the same part with regard to the Creeks. The
Georgian authorities paid no heed whatever to the desires of Congress,
and negotiated on their own account a series of treaties with the Creeks
at Augusta, Galphinton, and Shoulder-bone, in 1783, 1785, and 1786. But
these treaties amounted to nothing, for nobody could tell exactly which
towns or tribes owned a given tract of land, or what individuals were
competent to speak for the Indians as a whole; the Creeks and Cherokees
went through the form of surrendering the same territory on the Ocon