The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 135 



and milch cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from 

 Niagara or a brigade of fur-laden bateaux from the 

 upper lakes. 



In their paint and their cheap, dirty finery, these 

 savages did not look very important; yet it was 

 because of them that the British kept up their posts 

 in these far-off forests, beside these great lonely 

 waters; it was for their sakes that they tried to 

 stem the inrush of the settlers of their own blood 

 and tongue; for it was their presence alone which 

 served to keep the wilderness as a game preserve 

 for the fur merchants; it was their prowess in war 

 which prevented French village and British gar 

 rison from being lapped up like drops of water 

 before the fiery rush of the American advance. 

 The British themselves, though fighting with and 

 for them, loved them but little; like all frontiers 

 men, they soon grew to look down on their mean 

 and trivial lives, lives which nevertheless strongly 

 attracted white men of evil and shiftless, but ad 

 venturous, natures, and to which white children, 

 torn from their homes and brought up in the wig 

 wams, became passionately attached. Yet back of 

 the lazy and drunken squalor lay an element of 

 the terrible, all the more terrible because it could 

 not be reckoned with. Dangerous and treacherous 

 allies, upon whom no real dependence could ever 

 be placed, the Indians were nevertheless the most 

 redoubtable of all foes when the war was waged 

 in their own gloomy woodlands. 



At such a post those standing high in authority 



