88 The Winning of the West 



the young men from murdering and plundering, 

 either the neighboring Indians or the white settle- 

 ments. Their one ideal of glory was to get scalps, 

 and these the young braves were sure to seek, no 

 matter how much the older and cooler men might 

 try to prevent them. Whether war was declared 

 or not, made no difference. At one time the Eng- 

 lish exerted themselves successfully to bring about 

 a peace between the Creeks and Cherokees. At its 

 conclusion a Creek chief taunted the mediators as 

 follows : "You have sweated yourselves poor in our 

 smoky houses to make peace between us and the 

 Cherokees, and thereby enable our young people to 

 give you in a short time a far worse sweat than you 

 have yet had." 29 The result justified his predic- 

 tions; the young men, having no other foe, at once 

 took to ravaging the settlements. It soon became 

 evident that it was hopeless to expect the Creeks 

 to behave well to the whites merely because they 

 were themselves well treated, and from that time 

 on the English fomented, instead of striving to put 

 a stop to, their quarrels with the Choctaws and 

 Chickasaws. 



The record of our dealings with them must in 

 many places be unpleasant reading to us, for it 

 shows grave wrong-doing on our part; yet the 

 Creeks themselves lacked only the power, but not 

 the will, to treat us worse than we treated them, 

 and the darkest pages of their history recite the 

 wrongs that we ourselves suffered at their hands. 

 29 Adair, 279. 



