298 The Winning of the West 



Spanish provinces. In the days of sails and oars a 

 great river with rapid current might vitally affect 

 military operations if these depended upon sending 

 flotillas up or down stream. But such a river has 

 never proved a serious barrier against a vigorous 

 and aggressive race, where it lies between two peo- 

 ples, so that the aggressors have merely to cross it. 

 It offers no such shield as is afforded by a high 

 mountain range. The Mississippi served as a con- 

 venient line of demarcation between the Americans 

 and the Spaniards; but it offered no protection 

 whatever to the Spaniards against the Americans. 



Therefore the frontiersmen found nothing serious 

 to bar their further march westward ; the diminutive 

 Spanish garrisons in the little Creole towns near the 

 Missouri were far less capable of effective resist- 

 ance than were most of the Indian tribes whom the 

 Americans were brushing out of their path. To- 

 ward the South the situation was different. The 

 Floridas were shielded by the great Indian confed- 

 eracies of the Creeks and Choctaws, whose strength 

 was as yet unbroken. What was much more im- 

 portant, the mouth of the Mississippi was com- 

 manded by the important seaport of New Orleans, 

 which was accessible to fleets, which could readily 

 be garrisoned by water, and which was the capital 

 of a region that by backwoods standards passed for 

 well settled. New Orleans by its position was ab- 

 solute master of the foreign trade of the Mississippi 

 valley ; and any power in command of the seas could 

 easily keep it strongly garrisoned. The vast region 



