is that the whites, the representatives of civilization, speedily sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes, in point of hideous brutality.  The armies are neither led by trained officers nor made up of regular troops—­they are composed of armed settlers, fierce and wayward men, whose ungovernable passions are unrestrained by discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and intense hatred.  When the clash comes between these men and their sombre foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredible, of indescribable horror.  It is impossible to dwell without a shudder on the monstrous woe and misery of such a contest.

    The Lake Posts.

The men of Kentucky and of the infant Northwest would have found their struggle with the Indians dangerous enough in itself; but there was an added element of menace in the fact that back of the Indians stood the British.  It was for this reason that the frontiersmen grew to regard as essential to their well-being the possession of the lake posts; so that it became with them a prime object to wrest from the British, whether by force of arms or by diplomacy, the forts they held at Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimakinac.  Detroit was the most important, for it served as the headquarters of the western Indians, who formed for the time being the chief bar to American advance.  The British held the posts with a strong grip, in the interest of their traders and merchants.  To them the land derived its chief importance from the fur trade.  This was extremely valuable, and, as it steadily increased in extent and importance, the consequence of Detroit, the fitting-out town for the fur traders, grew in like measure.  It was the centre of a population of several thousand Canadians, who lived by the chase and by the rude cultivation of their long, narrow farms; and it was held by a garrison of three or four hundred British regulars, with auxiliary bands of American loyalist and French Canadian rangers, and, above all, with a formidable but fluctuating reserve force of Indian allies. [Footnote:  Haldimand Papers, 1784, 5, 6.]

    The British Aid the Indians.

It was to the interest of the British to keep the American settlers out of the land; and therefore their aims were at one with those of the Indians.  All the tribes between the Ohio and the Missouri were subsidized by them, and paid them a precarious allegiance.  Fickle, treacherous, and ferocious, the Indians at times committed acts of outrage even on their allies, so that these allies had to be ever on their guard; and the tribes were often at war with one another.  War interrupted trade and cut down profits, and the British endeavored to keep the different tribes at peace among themselves, and even with the Americans.  Moreover they always discouraged barbarities, and showed what kindness was in their power to any unfortunate