Louisiana and Aaron Burr 201 



Blount which was as offensive as it was fatu- 

 ous. In it he actually blamed Blount for getting 

 the Cherokees and Chickasaws to help protect the 

 frontier against the hostile Indians. He forbade 

 him to give any assistance to the Chickasaws. He 

 announced that he disapproved of The Stallion's 

 deeds, and that the Cherokees must not destroy 

 Creeks passing through their country on the way 

 to the frontier. He even intimated that the sur- 

 render of The Stallion to the Creeks would be a 

 good thing. As for protecting the frontier from the 

 ravages of the Creeks, he merely vouchsafed the 

 statement that he would instruct Seagrove to make 

 "some pointed declarations" to the Creeks on the 

 subject ! He explained that the United States Gov- 

 ernment was resolved not to have a direct or indirect 

 war with the Creeks; and he closed by reiterating, 

 with futile insistency, that the instruction to the 

 Cherokees not to permit Creek war parties against 

 the whites to come through their country, did not 

 warrant their using force to stop them. 85 He failed 

 to point out how it was possible, without force, to 

 carry out these instructions. 



A more shameful letter was never written, and it 

 was sufficient of itself to show Pickering's conspicu- 

 ous incapacity for the position he held. The trouble 

 was that he represented not very unfairly the senti- 

 ment of a large portion of the Eastern, and espe- 

 cially the Northeastern, people. When Blount vis- 

 ited Philadelphia in the summer of 1793 to urge a 



85 Robertson MSS., Pickering to Blount, March 23, 1795- 



