The attitude of the United States and Great Britain, as they faced one
another in the western wilderness at the beginning of the year 1791, is
but another illustration of the truth of this fact. The British held the
lake posts, and more or less actively supported the Indians in their
efforts to bar the Americans from the Northwest. Nominally, they held
the posts because the Americans had themselves left unfulfilled some of
the conditions of the treaty of peace; but this was felt not to be the
real reason, and the Americans loudly protested that their conduct was
due to sheer hatred of the young Republic. The explanation was simpler.
The British had no far-reaching design to prevent the spread and growth
of the English-speaking people on the American continent. They cared
nothing, one way or the other, for that spread and growth, and it is
unlikely that they wasted a moment's thought on the ultimate future of
the race. All that they desired was to preserve the very valuable
fur-trade of the region round the Great Lakes for their own benefit.
They were acting from the motives of self-interest that usually control
nations; and it never entered their heads to balance against these
immediate interests the future of a nation many of whose members were to
them mere foreigners.

Reluctance of the Americans to Enter into War with the Indians.

The majority of the Americans, on their side, were exceedingly loth to
enter into aggressive war with the Indians: but were reluctantly forced
into the contest by the necessity of supporting the backwoodsmen. The
frontier was pushed westward, not because the leading statesmen of
America, or the bulk of the American people, foresaw the continental
greatness of this country or strove for such greatness; but because the
bordermen of the West, and the adventurous land-speculators of the East,