CHAPTER XV

INDIAN WARS AND DIPLOMACY FROM THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION TO THE WAR OF 1812

Even before the issue of the military struggle was determined a contest of another for the possession of the Northwest had begun. France and Spain had entered into the conflict between Great Britain and her colonies from no love of the latter, of course, but rather from a desire on the one hand to humble Great Britain, on the other to advance their own interests. The French did not expect or care to recover their former colonial empire in America, their motive in aiding the colonies being to weaken their ancient enemy by insuring to her the loss of her American dominions. The entrance of Spain into the war in 1779, however, brought with it another problem. Spain, unlike France, had still a great colonial empire in America, including in its bounds all of the western side of the Mississippi River. The Spanish authorities with good reason viewed the prospective advance of the American settlers into the eastern half of the great valley as a menace to the permanence of her colonial possessions. She therefore strove, in the peace negotiations which found expression in the treaty of Paris of 1783, to confine the new American nation to the Allegheny Mountains as its western boundary. Between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi she would set up, south of the Ohio River, a permanent Indian reserve; north of that stream-the region now known as the Old Northwest-she was willing to see Great Britain retain dominion. In America itself a divided opinion prevailed on the subject of the western boundary of the new nation. The northern states were indifferent, or even opposed, to the organization of the western country, while the southern states in general, and particularly Virginia, which had chiefly supported Clark in his efforts to conquer the Northwest, were in favor of extending the boundaries to the Mississippi on the west and the Great Lakes on the north. This view prevailed alternately in the congress of the Confederation.

Fortunately for the future of the United States, the initiation of peace negotiations between the United States and Great Britain fell to the lot of two exceptionally broad-minded and able men, Lord Shelburne and Benjamin Franklin. The two men had been intimate friends

before the war. Lord Shelburne had perhaps a better understanding of American sentiment and conditions than any other English statesman, while Franklin had long manifested an active personal interest in the western country. To his argument that the adoption of a generous attitude by Great Britain toward her late colonies would tend to promote the restoration of friendship and good feelings between the two branches of the English race, Shelburne readily yielded, accepting its corollary, the American demand for the Mississippi as the western boundary of the new nation. Under the promptings of John Jay, one of the American peace commissioners, who became convinced that the French and Spanish statesmen were plotting to promote the interests of the latter country at the expense of the United States, separate negotiations were entered upon between the American and the English representatives, which resulted in securing the desired western boundary. There were, of course, many other questions at issue between the two countries, some of which occasioned far more discussion than did the boundary question. With some of these we shall have occasion to deal in the further course of the chapter. Here it is important to note that largely to the complaisant idealism of Lord Shelburne were the Americans indebted for the cession to them of the western country of which Wisconsin is a part in the treaty of Paris, which was finally signed in September, 1783.

Unfortunately, however, the prospect thus opened for an early reconciliation between the mother country and her former colonies did not materialize. The war had left Great Britain burdened with a vast debt, her dominion curtailed by more than a million square miles of territory and two and a half million subjects, her prestige no less seriously shaken, and her ancient foe across the channel glorying in the humiliation which had overtaken her. In view of all these things it was too much to expect that those who had been primarily responsible for this disaster should be restored at once to British favor without having encountered any manifestation of resentment. Furthermore, there were other elements in the situation of a kind directly calculated to breed irritation and discord between the two countries. The American Revolution had been, in a very real sense, a civil war. Upward of one-third of the colonists had remained loyal to the home government and in their ranks were to be found the major portion of those endowed with wealth, birth, and education. Between these "loyalists" and the "patriots," whose cause had triumphed, the most intense feeling of bitterness existed. Even so wise and conservative a man as Franklin shared the general feeling of resentment toward the loyalists and stood ready to justify the confiscation of their estates. Yet they had risked their all for the sake of the mother country, and

Great Britain's honor was involved in securing them against being punished for their devotion to her. A futile attempt was made during the peace negotiations to insure their protection, and its failure, while natural enough in view of the circumstances, constituted one of the elements of discord between the two nations in the years that followed. There were other causes of discord, and neither nation, in fact, fulfilled all the obligations it had entered into with the other. One of the knottiest problems was presented by the Indians and the Indian trade. It had been the ancient contention of the native tribes that they were sovereign nations, owing no subjection to the whites who came among them. Those who had fought as allies of Great Britain in the war were dismayed over the prospect of desertion by England at its termination. The British authorities put the best face possible on the situation, and it was long before the natives comprehended that so far as England could accomplish it their lands and themselves had been ceded to the Americans. Had the British power disappeared outright from America, as that of France had done at the close of the last war, the mischief wrought to the Indians would have been far less. They were quite unequal to maintaining, unaided, a contest with the United States, even as they were unable to subsist in peace without a continual supply of the goods upon which they had now for several generations been dependent. With Great Britain absent from the continent, therefore, the absolute necessity of coming to terms with the United States would have become quickly manifest to them. But with the retention of Canada by Great Britain, the Indians continued to look to their English Father for moral and material support in the difficult situation to which they had been reduced, while the English, on their part, became increasingly reluctant to sever the bonds which drew their former allies to them. The prosperity of Canada was identified with the far-reaching fur trade, the prosecution of which afforded a market, in turn, for a considerable quantity of British goods and employment to British shipping. The boundary laid down in the recent peace treaty cut squarely in two the country from which the furs came down to Montreal. While an important part of them came from the north side of the Lakes and the Canadian Northwest, the Mississippi country and the region south of the Lakes supplied an equal proportion of the whole.

Within this area, scattered along the borders of the Great Lakes, was the line of military posts which the British had held through the Revolution. The more important of these were Oswego on Lake Ontario, Fort Niagara, between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, Fort Erie, on the southeast shore of the lake of that name, Detroit, and Mackinac. The treaty of Paris required Great Britain to withdraw her armies

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from all places within the borders of the United States "with all convenient speed." This obligation was kept elsewhere, but in the Northwest it was calmly ignored. The real ruler of Canada for the first few years following the Revolution was General Haldimand, commander of the British army in America and governor of Quebec. To his judgment the home government practically deferred all decisions with respect to the administration of American affairs, and he readily yielded to the pressure of the Montreal merchants, who feared that with the delivery of the northwestern posts to the United States would pass, also, the control of the fur trade. Along with this commercial motive went the political consideration that the Indian tribes interposed between the American frontier and Canada were the chief protection of the latter against American aggression. To abandon the posts and the fur trade to the United States would mean to alienate the tribes, converting them from potential defenders to enemies in any future war. To retain the friendship of the tribes for the protection of Canada, and the control of the fur trade with which its prosperity was bound up, were the dominant motives of Haldimand's policy.

In the United States, meanwhile, a somewhat chaotic condition of. affairs prevailed. The states were jealous of their individual prerogatives, and the government of the Confederation was feeble and impotent. The Congress laid down the general policy that the Indian lands were to be regarded as conquered territory, and that the state of the finances would not permit the extinguishment of the Indian claims to the soil by purchase. The application of such a policy was certain to be resisted by the Indians, who in the event of war with the United States would not fail to look to the British for sympathy and material support. While the present distracted condition of the Confederation continued, however, the likelihood of aggressive action was slight, and the policy which Haldimand had adopted could be continued in comparative safety. The efforts of Congress, therefore, to secure the evacuation of the posts by direct negotiations with Haldimand proved futile, and in 1785 John Adams was dispatched to the Court of St. James to deal with this and other matters at issue between the two nations. To him the Ministry advanced the argument that the retention of the posts was connected with the matter of the debts due to the loyalists in America. Although this was but a pretext put forward in lieu of the real reason, Adams was led to treat it in the light of a promise that the posts would be evacuated when the American states removed the obstructions to the collection of the debts. Acting on his report, Congress recommended to the several states the repeal of the obstructive acts complained of, and by 1789 this had been ac