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 better element of the Delaware nation, led by Captain White Eyes, became attached to the American cause. England was always handicapped in her use of the American Indian, because of the want of men who could successfully exert control over him. Even when the forts of the French in the West passed into British possession, Frenchmen were retained in control, since no Englishman could so well rule the savages who made the forts their rendezvous. The beginning of the successful employment of the Indians against the growing Virginian empire south of the Ohio, and against the multiplying cabins and forts of the Long Knives, may loosely be said to have begun in the spring of 1778 when three northern renegades, Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, and Alexander McKee, eluded the continental General Hand at Pittsburg and took service under Lieutenant-governor Hamilton at Detroit. Bred to border warfare, and well known among the Indians from the Susquehanna to the Missouri, these three men were the "most effective tools for the purposes of border warfare" that the British could have