pseudo-historian
is especially fond of painting the British as behaving to us with
unexampled barbarity; yet nothing is more sure than that the French were
far mote cruel and less humane in their contests with us than were the
British.] in paying money to the Indians for the scalps of their foes.
It is equally beyond question that the British acted with much more
humanity than their French predecessors had shown. Apparently the best
officers utterly disapproved of the whole business of scalp buying; but
it was eagerly followed by many of the reckless agents and partisan
leaders, British, tories, and Canadians, who themselves often
accompanied the Indians against the frontier and witnessed or shared in
their unmentionable atrocities. It is impossible to acquit either the
British home government or its foremost representatives at Detroit of a
large share in the responsibility for the appalling brutality of these
men and their red allies; but the heaviest blame rests on the home
government.

The Country Pacified.

Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and was able to establish
permanent garrisons at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia. With the
Indian tribes who lived round about he made firm peace; against some
hunting bands of Delawares who came in and began to commit ravages, he
waged ruthless and untiring war, sparing the women and children, but
killing all the males capable of bearing arms, and he harried most of
them out of the territory, while the rest humbly sued for peace. His own
men worshipped him; the French loved and stood in awe of him while the
Indians respected and feared him greatly. During the remainder of the
Revolutionary war the British were not able to make any serious effort
to shake the hold he had given the Americans on the region lying around
and between Vincennes and the Illinois. Moreover he so effectually
pacified the tribes between the Wabash and the Mississippi that they did
not become open and formidable foes of the whites until, with the close
of the war against Britain, Kentucky passed out of the stage when Indian
hostilities threatened her very life.

The fame of Clark's deeds and the terror of his prowess spread to the
southern Indians, and the British at Natchez trembled lest they should
share the fate that had come on Kaskaskia and Vincennes. [Footnote:
State Department MSS. [Intercepted Letters], No. 51, Vol. II., pp. 17
and 45. Letter of James Colbert, a half-breed in t