196 The Winning of the West 



by Galvez over both the British regulars and the 

 Tory American settlers were fresh in their minds; 

 and they felt they had a chance of success even in 

 a contest of arms. But the weapons upon which 

 they relied most were craft and intrigue. If the 

 Union could be broken up, or the jealousies between 

 the States and sections fanned into flame, there 

 would be little chance of a successful aggressive 

 movement by the Americans of any one common 

 wealth. The Spanish authorities sought to achieve 

 these ends by every species of bribery and corrupt 

 diplomacy. They placed even more reliance upon 

 the warlike confederacies of the Creeks, Cherokees, 

 Choctaws, and Chickasaws, thrust in between them 

 selves and the frontier settlements; and while pro 

 testing to the Americans with smooth treachery that 

 they were striving to keep the Indians at peace, 

 they secretly incited them to hostilities, and fur 

 nished them with arms and munitions of war. The 

 British held the Lake Posts by open exhibition of 

 strength, though they, too, were not above conniv 

 ing at treachery and allowing their agents covertly 

 to urge the red tribes to resist the American ad 

 vance; but the Spaniards, by preference, trusted to 

 fraud rather than to force. 



In the last resort the question of the navigation 

 of the Mississippi had to be decided between the 

 Governments of Spain and the United States; and 

 it was chiefly through the latter that the Westerners 

 could, indirectly, but most powerfully, make their 

 influence felt. In the longhand intricate negotia- 



