roit,
telling the French villagers that "their father [the British Commandant]
was a dog," because he had given them no arms or ammunition, and that in
consequence they would not deliver him their prisoner, but would take
the poor wretch with them to their Mackinaw home. Accordingly they
carried him on to the far-off island at the mouth of Lake Michigan; but
just as they were preparing to make him run the gauntlet the British
commander of the lonely little post interfered. This subaltern with his
party of a dozen soldiers was surrounded by many times his number of
ferocious savages, and was completely isolated in the wilderness; but
his courage stood as high as his humanity, and he broke through the
Indians, threatening them with death if they interfered, rescued the
captive American, and sent him home in safety. [Footnote: State Dept.
MSS., No. 150, vol. iii. William Wilson and James Rinkin to Richard
Butler, August 4, 1788; Wilson and Rinkin to St. Clair, August 31,
1788.]

The other Indians made no attempt to check the Chippewas; on the
contrary, the envoys of the Iroquois and Delawares made vain efforts to
secure the release of the Chippewa prisoners. On the other hand, the
generous gallantry of the British commander at Mackinaw was in some sort
equalled by the action of the traders on the Maumee, who went to great
expense in buying from the Shawnees Americans whom they had doomed to
the terrible torture of death at the stake. [Footnote: _Do_., Rinkin to
Butler, July 2, 1788; St. Clair to Knox, September 4, 1788.]

Under such circumstances the treaties of course came to naught. After
interminable delays the Indians either refused to treat at all, or else
the acts of those who did were promptly repudiated by those who did not.
In consequence throughout this period even the treaties that were made
were quite worthless, for they bound nobody. Moreover, there were the
usual clashes between the National and State authorities. While Harmar
was trying to treat, the Kentuckians were organizing retaliatory
inroads; and while the United States Commissioners were trying to hold
big peace councils on the Ohio, the New York and Massachusetts
Commissioners were conducting independent negotiations at what is now
Buffalo, to determine the western boundary of New York. [Footnote:
_Do_., Wilson and Rinkin to St. Clair, July 29, 1788. These treaties
made at the Ohio forts are quite unworthy of preservation, save for mere
curiosity;