strapped to his side as he ploughed, and he scarcely dared
venture into the woods for the winter's supply of fuel and game.
Hardly a day passed on which a riderless horse did not come
galloping into some lonely clearing, telling of afresh tragedy on
the trail.

The rousing of the Indians against the frontiersmen was an odious
act. The people of the back country were in not the slightest
degree responsible for the revolt against British authority in
the East. They were non-combatants, and no amount of success in
sweeping them from their homes could affect the larger outcome.
The crowning villainy of this shameful policy was the turning of
the redskins loose to prey upon helpless women and children.

The responsibility for this inhumanity must be borne in some
degree by the government of George III. "God and nature," wrote
the Earl of Suffolk piously, "hath put into our hands the
scalping-knife and tomahawk, to torture them into unconditional
submission." But the fault lay chiefly with the British officers
at the western posts--most of all, with Lieutenant-Governor
Hamilton at Detroit. Probably no British representative in
America was on better terms with the natives. He drank with them,
sang war-songs with them, and received them with open arms when
they came in from the forests with the scalps of white men
dangling at their belts. A great council on the banks of the
Detroit in June, 1778, was duly opened with prayer, after which
Hamilton harangued the assembled Chippewas, Hurons, Mohawks, and
Potawatomi on their "duties" in the war and congratulated them on
the increasing numbers of their prisoners and scalps, and then
urged them to redoubled activity by holding out the prospect of