he frontier--especially when put in
charge of Indian reservations or of French or Spanish communities--have
almost always been more or less at swords-points with the stubborn,
cross-grained pioneers. The borderers are usually as suspicious as they
are independent, and their self-sufficiency and self-reliance often
degenerate into mere lawlessness and defiance of all restraint.

The Regular Officers Side with the French against the Americans.

The Federal officers in the backwoods north of the Ohio got on badly
with the backwoodsmen. Harmar took the side of the French Creoles, and
warmly denounced the acts of the frontiersmen who had come in among
them. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 150, vol. ii., Harmar to Le
Grasse and Busseron, June 29, 1787.] In his letter to the Creoles he
alluded to Clark's Vincennes garrison as "a set of lawless banditti,"
and explained that his own troops were regulars, who would treat with
justice both the French and Indians. Harmar never made much effort to
conceal dislike of the borderers. In one letter he alludes to a Delaware
chief as "a manly old fellow, and much more of a gentleman than the
generality of these frontier people." [Footnote: _Do_., Harmar to the
Secretary of War, March 9, 1788.] Naturally, there was little love lost
between the bitterly prejudiced old army officer, fixed and rigid in all
his ideas, and the equally prejudiced backwoodsmen, whose ways of
looking at almost all questions were antipodal to his.

The Creoles of the Illinois and Vincennes sent warm letters of welcome
to Harmar. The American settlers addressed him in an equally respectful
but very different tone, for, they said, their hearts were filled with
"anxiety, gloominess, and dismay." They explained the alarm they felt at
the report that they were to be driven out of the country, and
protested--what was doubtless true--that they had settled on the land in
entire good faith, and with the assent of the French inhabitants. The
latter themselves bore testimony to the good faith, and good behavior of
many of the settlers, and petitioned that these should not be molested,
[Footnote: _Do_., Address of American Inhabitants of Vincennes, August
4, 1787; Recommendation by French Inhabitants in Favor of American
Inhabitants, August 2d; Letter of Le Chamy and others, Kaskaskia, August
25th; Letter of J. M. P. Le Gras, June 25th.] explaining that the French
had been benefited by their industry, and had preserved a