nevertheless seen to be of little worth. Like Providence, the
Indians were sure to side with the big battalions. For want of a
few effective garrisons at the beginning, the English found
themselves deserted by their quondam allies, and although they
recovered this facile allegiance as soon as the French garrisons
were taken, it was evident enough in the late years of the war
that fear alone inspired the red man's loyalty. The Indian
apparently did not realize at this early date that his was an
inferior race destined to be supplanted. Of a primitive and
uncultivated intelligence, it was not possible for him to foresee
the beneficent designs of the Ohio Company or to observe with
friendly curiosity the surveyors who came to draw imaginary lines
through the virgin forest. And therefore, even in an age when the
natural rights of man were being loudly proclaimed, the "Nations
of Indians inhabiting those parts" were only too ready to believe
what the Virginia traders told them of the Pennsylvanians, what
the Pennsylvania traders told them of the Virginians--that the
fair words of the English were but a kind of mask to conceal the
greed of men who had no other desire than to deprive the red man
of his beloved hunting grounds.

Thus it was that the industrious men with pedantic minds who day
by day read the dispatches that accumulated in the office of the
Board of Trade became aware, during the years from 1758 to 1761,
that the old policy of defense was not altogether adequate. "The
granting of lands hitherto unsettled," so the Board reported in
1761, "appears to be a measure of the most dangerous tendency."
In December of the same year all governors were accordingly
forbidden "to pass grants...or encourage settlements upon any
lands within the said colonies which may interfere with the