prisoners whom the Indians happened to bring to their posts.  But they helped the Indians in all ways save by open military aid to keep back the American settlers.  They wished a monopoly of the fur trade; and they endeavored to prevent the Americans from coming into their settlements. [Footnote:  Do. John Hay to Haldimand, Aug. 13, 1784; James McNeil, Aug 1 1785.] English officers and agents attended the Indian councils, endeavored to attach the tribes to the British interests, and encouraged them to stand firm against the Americans and to insist upon the Ohio as the boundary between the white man and the red. [Footnote:  Do. Letter of A. McKee, Dec. 24, 1786; McKee to Sir John Johnson, Feb. 25, 1786; Major Ancrum, May 8, 1786.] The Indians received counsel and advice from the British, and drew from them both arms and munitions of war, and while the higher British officers were usually careful to avoid committing any overt breach of neutrality, the reckless partisan leaders sought to inflame the Indians against the Americans, and even at times accompanied their war parties.

    Life at a Frontier Post.

The life led at a frontier post like Detroit was marked by sharp contrasts.  The forest round about was cleared away, though blackened stumps still dotted the pastures, orchards, and tilled fields.  The town itself was composed mainly of the dwellings of the French habitans; some of them were mere hovels, others pretty log cottages, all swarming with black-eyed children; while the stoutly-made, swarthy men, at once lazy and excitable, strolled about the streets in their picturesque and bright-colored blanket suits.  There were also a few houses of loyalist refugees; implacable Tories, stalwart men, revengeful, and goaded by the memory of many wrongs done and many suffered, who proved the worst enemies of their American kinsfolk.  The few big roomy buildings, which served as storehouses and residences for the merchants, were built not only for the storage of goods and peltries, but also as strongholds in case of attack.  The heads of the mercantile houses were generally Englishmen; but the hardy men who traversed the woods for months and for seasons, to procure furs from the Indians, were for the most part French.  The sailors, both English and French, who manned the vessels on the lakes formed another class.  The rough earthworks and stockades of the fort were guarded by a few light guns.  Within, the red-coated regulars held sway, their bright uniforms varied here and there by the dingy hunting-shirt, leggings, and fur cap of some Tory ranger or French partisan leader.  Indians lounged about the fort, the stores, and the houses, begging, or gazing stolidly at the troops as they drilled, at the creaking carts from the outlying farms as they plied through the streets, at the driving to and fro from pasture of the horses and milch cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from Niagara or a brigade of fur-laden bateaux from the upper lakes.