The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 203 



that we find traders purchasing flour in Louisville 

 at twenty-four shillings a hundredweight, and car 

 rying it down stream to sell in New Orleans at thirty 

 dollars a barrel. By summer of the same year the 

 Spaniards were again shutting off traffic, being in 

 great panic over a rumored piratical advance by the 

 frontiersmen, to oppose which they were mustering 

 their troops and making ready their artillery. 11 



Among the articles the frontier traders received 

 for their goods horses held a high place. 12 The 

 horse trade was risky, as in driving them up to Ken 

 tucky many were drowned, or played out, or were 

 stolen by the Indians; but as picked horses and 

 mares cost but twenty dollars a head in Louisiana 

 and were sold at a hundred dollars a head in the 

 United States, the losses had to be very large to eat 

 up the profits. 



The French Creoles, who carried on much of the 

 river trade and who lived some under the American 

 and some under the Spanish flag, of course suffered 

 as much as either Americans or Spaniards. Often 

 these Creoles loaded their canoes with a view to trad 

 ing with the Indians, rather than at New Orleans. 

 Whether this was so or not, those officially in the 

 service of the two powers soon grew as zealous in 

 oppressing one another as in oppressing men of dif 

 ferent nationalities. Thus in 1787 a Vincennes cre- 



11 Draper MSS. J. Girault to William Clark, July 22, 1784; 

 May 23, 1785; July 2, 1785; certificate of French merchants 

 testified to by Miro in 1785. 



1S Do. Girault to Clark, July 9, 1784. 



