Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/526

506 Revolutionary War. The first, the chief, the longest protracted, and the most harrassing of our relations with the savages, at the beginning of our separate nationality, is directly chargeable upon the course pursued by the British Government; and for two reasons. First, the large majority of the Indian tribes had during the war been in the service and pay of Great Britain. They did faithful service, too, under the alarms and atrocities of which the colonists smarted. They fought, and multitudes of their warriors died, for the British, whose officials had promised by solemn covenant, at the opening of the war, that all their losses by the alliance should be made good to them, whatever the result of the conflict. But in the treaty of peace acknowledging our independence, Great Britain made no mention whatever of these her red allies, required of us no terms on their behalf, or lenience or pardon to them, made them no compensation, except as she held them for further mischief against us, and left them maddened and hungry on our hands.

Again, the territorial boundaries which Britain granted to her freed colonies in America took in the ancient hunting-grounds of the Six Nations and other tribes, which she had no right to give away; and by retaining the Lake and Western posts which she had agreed to surrender, she fomented all sorts of strifes for us with the savages. It was by the sinister influence which she continued to exercise over the Indians within our own bounds that Britain was able, down to and inclusive of the war of 1812, to give us constant and costly trouble with tribes instigated and paid by her.

When the English obtained the transfer of the Dutch colony of New York, in 1664, the Six Nations had come under her protection against the French, the Hurons, and the Algonquins of Canada. A very complicated arrangement ensued. England recognized in terms the territorial rights of the natives, but claimed a right of pre-emption