In the Current of the Revolution 331 



American frontiersmen upon whom the blow fell, 

 and changed their resentment against the British 

 king into a deadly and lasting hatred, which their 

 sons and grandsons inherited. Indian warfare was 

 of such peculiar atrocity that the employment of 

 Indians as allies forbade any further hope of rec- 

 onciliation. It is not necessary to accept the 

 American estimate of the motives inspiring the act 

 in order to sympathize fully with the horror and 

 anger that it aroused among the frontiersmen. 

 They saw their homes destroyed, their wives out- 

 raged, their children captured, their friends butch- 

 ered and tortured wholesale by Indians armed with 

 British weapons, bribed by British gold, and obey- 

 ing the orders of British agents and commanders. 

 Their stormy anger was not likely to be allayed by 

 the consideration that Congress also had at first 

 made some effort to enlist Indians in the patriot 

 forces, nor were they apt to bear in mind the fact 

 that the British, instead of being abnormally cruel, 

 were in reality less so than our former French and 

 Spanish opponents. 15 



Looking back it is easy to see that the Indians 

 were the natural foes of the American people, and 



15 No body of British troops in the Revolution bore such a 

 dark stain on its laurels as the massacre at Fort William 

 Henry left on the banners of Montcalm; even the French, 

 not to speak of the Spaniards and Mexicans, were to us fat- 

 more cruel foes than the British, though generally less formi- 

 dable. In fact the British, as conquerors and rulers in America, 

 though very disagreeable, have not usually been either need- 

 lessly cruel nor (relatively speaking) unjust, and compare 

 rather favorably with most other European nations. 



