The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 225 



trast to the systematic and deliberate duplicity and 

 treachery of the Spanish Crown and the Spanish 

 Governors. In truth, the Spaniards were the weak 

 est, and were driven to use the pet weapons of weak 

 ness in opposing their stalwart and masterful foes. 

 They were fighting against their doom, and they 

 knew it. Already they had begun to fear, not only 

 for Louisiana and Florida, but even for sultry Mex 

 ico and far-away golden California. It was hard, 

 wrote one of the ablest of the Spanish Governors, 

 to gather forces enough to ward off attacks from 

 adventurers so hardy that they could go two hun 

 dred leagues at a stretch, or live six months in the 

 wilderness, needing to carry nothing save some corn- 

 meal, and trusting for everything solely to their 

 own long rifles. 



Next to secretly rousing the Indians, the Span 

 iards placed most reliance on intriguing with the 

 Westerners, in the effort to sunder them from the 

 seaboard Americans. They also at times thought 

 to bar the American advance by allowing the fron 

 tiersmen to come into their territory and settle on 

 condition of becoming Spanish subjects. They 

 hoped to make of these favored settlers a barrier 

 against the rest of their kinsfolk. It was a foolish 

 hope. A wild and hardy race of rifle-bearing free 

 men, so intolerant of restraint that they fretted un 

 der the slight bands which held them to their breth 

 ren, were sure to throw off the lightest yoke the 

 Catholic King could lay upon them, when once they 

 gathered strength. Under no circumstances, even 



