158 The Winning of the West 



plundered the stores of Panton, a white trader in 

 the Spanish interest, and for a moment his authority 

 seemed supreme; but the Spaniards, by a trick, got 

 possession of him and put him in prison. 



The Spaniards still claimed as their own the 

 Southwestern country, and were untiring in their 

 efforts to keep the Indians united among themselves 

 and hostile to the Americans. They concluded a 

 formal treaty of friendship and of reciprocal 

 guarantee with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, 

 and Cherokees at Nogales, in the Choctaw country, 

 on May 14, I792. 27 The Indians entered into this 

 treaty at the very time they had concluded wholly 

 inconsistent treaties with the Americans. On the 

 place of the treaty the Spaniards built a fort, which 

 they named Fort Confederation, to perpetuate, as 

 they hoped, the memory of the confederation they 

 had thus established among the Southern Indians. 

 By means of this fort they intended to control all 

 the territory inclosed between the rivers Mississippi, 

 Yazoo, Chickasaw, and Mobile. The Spaniards 

 also expended large sums of money in arming the 

 Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were 

 willing to do of their own accord, that is, to 

 prevent the demarcation of the boundary line as 

 provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which 

 Carondelet reported to his Court as "insulting and 

 pernicious to Spain, the abrogation of which has 



81 Draper MSS. , Spanish Documents ; Letter of Carondelet 

 to Duke of Alcudia, Nov. 24, 1794. 



