n6 The Winning of the West 



actly how much he was to blame it is difficult to 

 say. Certainly the blame rests even more with the 

 crown, and the ruling class in Britain, than with 

 Hamilton, who merely carried out the orders of his 

 superiors; and though he undoubtedly heartily ap- 

 proved of these orders, and executed them with 

 eager zest, yet it seems that he did what he could 

 which was very little to prevent unnecessary 

 atrocities. 



The crime consisted in employing the savages 

 at all in a war waged against men, women, and 

 children alike. Undoubtedly the British at Detroit 

 followed the example of the French 49 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 pred- 

 ecessors 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 im- 

 possible to acquit either the British home govern- 

 ment or its foremost representatives at Detroit of 



49 See Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," II, 421, for ex- 

 amples of French payments, some of a peculiarly flagrant 

 sort. A certain kind of American pseudo-historian is espe- 

 cially fond of painting the British as behaving to us with un- 

 exampled barbarity ; yet nothing is more sure than that the 

 French were far more cruel and less humane in their contests 

 with us than were the British. 



