ut, or were stolen by the Indians; but as picked
horses and mares cost but twenty dollars a head in Louisiana and were
sold at a hundred dollars a head in the United States, the losses had to
be very large to eat up the profits.

Creole Traders.

The French Creoles, who carried on much of the river trade and who lived
some under the American and some under the Spanish flag, of course
suffered as much as either Americans or Spaniards. Often these Creoles
loaded their canoes with a view to trading with the Indians, rather than
at New Orleans. Whether this was so or not, those officially in the
service of the two powers soon grew as zealous in oppressing one another
as in oppressing men of different nationalities. Thus in 1787 a
Vincennes Creole, having loaded his pirogue with goods to the value of
two thousand dollars, sent it down to trade with the Indians near the
Chickasaw Bluffs. Here it was seized by the Creole commandant of the
Spanish post at the Arkansas. The goods were confiscated and the men
imprisoned. The owner appealed in vain to the commandant, who told him
that he was ordered by the Spanish authorities to seize all persons who
trafficked on the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio, inasmuch as
Spain claimed both banks of the river; and when he made his way to New
Orleans and appealed to Miro he was summarily dismissed with a warning
that a repetition of the offence would ensure his being sent to the
mines of Brazil. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 150 vol. iii., p. 519.
Letter of Joseph St. Mary, Vincennes, August 23, 1788.]

Retaliation of the Frontiersmen.

Outrages of this kind, continually happening alike to Americans and to
Creoles under American protection, could not have been tamely borne by
any self-respecting people. The fierce and hardy frontiersmen were
goaded to anger by them, and were ready to take part in, or at least to
connive at, any piece of lawless retaliation. Such an act of revenge was
committed by Clark at Vincennes, as one result of his ill-starred
expedition against the Wabash Indians in 1786. As already said, when his
men mutinied and refused to march against the Indians, most of them
returned home; but he kept enough to garrison the Vincennes fort.
Unpaid, and under no regular authority, these men plundered the French
inhabitants and were a terror to the peaceable, as well as to the
lawless, Indians. Doubtless Clark desired to hold them in readiness as
much for a ra