him for fifty barrels of gunpowder and bullets to correspond, and that he had ordered the Governor of Pensacola to furnish McGillivray, their chief, these munitions of war, with all possible secrecy and caution, so that it should not become known. [Footnote:  Do., Miro to Galvez, June 28, 1786, “que summistrase estas municiones a McGillivray Jefe principal to las Talapuches con toda la reserve y cantata posible de modo que ne se transiendiese la mano de este socorro.”] The Governor of Pensacola shortly afterwards related the satisfaction the Creeks felt at receiving the powder and lead, and added that he would have to furnish them additional supplies from time to time, as the war progressed, and that he would exercise every precaution so that the Americans might have no “just cause of complaint.” [Footnote:  Do., “sera necessaria la mayor precaucion, y mana para contenerle cinendose a la suministracion de polvora, balas y efectos de treta con la cantata posible para no dar a los Americanos justos motivos de gueya.”] There is an unconscious and somewhat gruesome humor in this official belief that the Americans could have “no just cause” for anger so long as the Spaniards’ treachery was concealed.

    Spanish Duplicity.

Throughout these years the Spaniards thus secretly supplied the Creeks with the means of waging war on the Americans, claiming all the time that the Creeks were their vassals and that the land occupied by the southern Indians generally belonged to Spain and not to the United States. [Footnote:  Do.] They also kept their envoys busy among the Chickasaws, Choctaws, and even the Cherokees.

In fact, until the conclusion of Pinckney’s treaty, the Spaniards of Louisiana pursued as a settled policy this plan of inciting the Indians to war against the Americans.  Generally they confined themselves to secretly furnishing the savages with guns, powder, and lead, and endeavoring to unite the tribes in a league; but on several occasions they openly gave them arms, when they were forced to act hurriedly.  As late as 1794 the Flemish Baron de Carondelet, a devoted servant of Spain, and one of the most determined enemies of the Americans, instructed his lieutenants to fit out war parties of Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, to harass a fort the Americans had built near the mouth of the Ohio.  Carondelet wrote to the Home Government that the Indians formed the best defence on which Louisiana could rely.  By this time the Spaniards and English realized that, instead of showing hostility to one another, it behooved them to unite against the common foe; and their agents in Canada and Louisiana were beginning to come to an understanding.  In another letter Carondelet explained that the system adopted by Lord Dorchester and the English officials in Canada in dealing with the savages was the same as that which he had employed, both the Spaniards and the British having found them the most powerful means with which to oppose the American advance.