Louisiana and Aaron Burr 217 



he was a faithful reflex of his superiors at the Span- 

 ish Court. At the same time that they were sol- 

 emnly covenanting for a definite treaty of peace with 

 the United States they were secretly intriguing to 

 bring about a rebellion in the Western States; and 

 while they were assuring the Americans that they 

 w r ere trying their best to keep the Indians peaceful, 

 they were urging the savages to war. 



As for any gratitude to the National Government 

 for stopping the piratical expeditions of the West- 

 erners, the Spaniards did not feel a trace. They 

 had early received news of Clark's projected expedi- 

 tion through a Frenchman who came to the Spanish 

 agents at Philadelphia; 13 and when the army began 

 to gather they received from time to time from their 

 agents in Kentucky reports which, though exagger- 

 ated, gave them a fairly accurate view of what was 

 happening. No overt act of hostility was com- 

 mitted by Clark's people, except by some of those 

 who started to join him from the Cumberland dis- 

 trict, under the lead of a man named Montgomery. 

 These men built a wooden fort at the mouth of the 

 Cumberland River, and held the boats that passed to 

 trade with Spain ; one of the boats that they took 

 being a scow loaded with flour and biscuit sent up 

 stream by the Spanish Government itself. When 

 Wayne heard of the founding of this fort he acted 

 with his usual promptness, and sent an expedition 

 which broke it up and released the various boats. 



13 Draper MSS. , Spanish Documents, Carondelet to Aleudia, 

 March 20, 1794. 



VOL. VIII. 10 



