erciless wars
with murderous savages. For the fact remains, that if England had
promptly surrendered up the posts; had not interfered with our
negotiations for peace with the Indian tribes; had refused to encourage
any confederacy, and had instructed her commanders to keep their spies
and agents out of American territory, the murders on the Ohio, the
slaughter of innocents, and the long, costly and bloody campaigns in the
Indian country might have been avoided.

Nothing can ever extenuate the conduct of England in keeping in her
employ and service such men as Alexander McKee, Matthew Elliott and
Simon Girty. The chief rendezvous of the tribes after the revolution was
at Detroit. Here were located a British garrison and a British Indian
agency. This agency, while guarding the trade in peltries, also kept its
eye on the fleets that descended the Ohio, on the growing settlements of
Kentucky, and warned the Indians against American encroachment. In 1778,
and while the revolution was in progress, the missionary John
Heckewelder, noted the arrival at Goschochking on the Muskingum, of
three renegades and fugitives from Pittsburg. They were McKee, Elliott
and Girty. McKee and Elliott had both been traders among the Indians
and understood their language. All three had deserted the American cause
and were flying into the arms of the British. They told the Delawares
and Wyandots, "That it was the determination of the American people to
kill and destroy the whole Indian race, be they friends or foes, and
possess themselves of their country; and that, at this time, while they
were embodying themselves for the purpose, they were preparing fine
sounding speeches to deceive them, that they might with more safety fall
upon and murder them. That now was the time, and the only time, for all
nations to rise, and turn out to a man against these intruders, and not
even suffer them to cross the Ohio, but fall upon them where they should
find them; which if not done without delay, their country would be lost
to them forever." The same men were now inculcating the same doctrines
at Detroit. They pointed out to the Indians that the Americans were bent
on extinguishing all their council fires with the best blood of the
nations; that despite all their fair promises and pretensions, the
Americans cared nothing for the tribes, but only for their lands. That
England by her treaty had not ceded a foot of the Indian territory to
the United States. That