1760-1763.] GLOOMY PROSPECTS OF THE INDIANS. 185 



in check upon the American continent, and the 

 Indians had, in some measure, held the balance of 

 power between them. To conciliate their good 

 will and gain their alliance, to avoid offending 

 them by injustice and encroachment, was the 

 policy both of the French and English. But now 

 the face of affairs was changed. The English had 

 gained an undisputed ascendency, and the Indians, 

 no longer important as allies, w^ere treated as mere 

 barbarians, who might be trampled upon with im- 

 punity. Abandoned to their own feeble resources 

 and divided strength, they must fast recede, and 

 dwindle away before the steady progress of the 

 colonial power. Already their best hunting- 

 grounds were invaded, and from the eastern 

 ridges of the Alleghanies they might see, from 

 far and near, the smoke of the settlers' clearings, 

 rising in tall columns from the dark-green bosom 

 of the forest. The doom of the race was sealed, 

 and no human power could avert it ; but they, in 

 their ignorance, believed otherwise, and vainly 

 thought that, by a desperate effort, they might 

 yet uproot and overthrow the growing strength 

 of their destroyers. 



It would be idle to suppose that the great mass 

 of the Indians understood, in its full extent, the 

 danger which threatened their race. With them, 

 the war was a mere outbreak of fury, and they 

 turned against their enemies with as little reason 

 or forecast as a panther when he leaps at the throat 

 of the hunter. Goaded by wrongs and indignities, 

 they struck for revenge, and for relief from the evil 



