The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 85 



fur-traders. They endeavored in vain to bar him 

 from the solitudes through which only the Indians 

 roved. 



All the ports around the Great Lakes were held 

 by the British; 1 their officers, military and civil, 

 still kept possession, administering the government 

 of the scattered French hamlets, and preserving 

 their old-time relations with the Indian tribes, whom 

 they continued to treat as allies or feudatories. To 

 the south and west the Spaniards played the same 

 part. They scornfully refused to heed the boundary 

 established to the southward by the treaty between 

 England and the United States, alleging that the 

 former had ceded what it did not possess. They 

 claimed the land as theirs by right of conquest. 

 The territory which they controlled stretched from 

 Florida along a vaguely defined boundary to the 

 Mississippi, up the east bank of the latter at least 

 to the Chickasaw Bluffs, and thence up the west 

 bank; while the Creeks and Choctaws were under 

 their influence. The Spaniards dreaded and hated 

 the Americans even more than did the British, and 

 they were right; for three-fourths of the present 

 territory of the United States then lay within the 

 limits of the Spanish possessions. 2 



Thus there were foes, both white and red, to be 

 overcome, either by force of arms or by diplomacy, 



1 State Dep. MSS., No. 150, Vol. II, March, 1788. Report 

 of Secretary Knox. 



4 State Dep. MSS., No. 81, Vol. II, pp. 189, 217. No. 120, 

 vol. ii, June 30, 1786. 



