[175] Ibid., 439. Hamilton, who captured the place in 1778, states, however, that he found 621 inhabitants of whom 217 were able to bear arms (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society Collections, IX, 495). This work will be cited henceforth as Michigan Pioneer Collections.
In the Illinois settlements of the American Bottom in 1778 there was a population of about one thousand whites, and as many Indians and negroes.[176] The more populous settlements were Cahokia, with three hundred white inhabitants, and Kaskaskia, with five hundred whites and almost as many negroes.
[176] For an account of these settlements see the introduction to the Cahokia Records, Illinois Historical Collections, II, pp. xiii ff.
For the rest, the vast region which now teems with a population as prosperous and as highly civilized as any on the face of the globe was a wilderness. The Indian tribes could muster, according to the usual estimates, about eight thousand warriors, which would imply a total population several times as large.[177] The Chippewas alone numbered over half of this total. Our interest, however, is concerned rather with certain of the smaller tribes. Around the southern end of Lake Michigan, with a village at Chicago but with their principal seat on the St. Joseph River, were the Pottawatomies, numbering some four hundred warriors. To the south and southeast of these, in the modern states of Indiana and Ohio, were the Miamis, Shawnees, and other tribes, who were to contest the possession of the Northwest with the Americans even more fiercely than did Great Britain herself. To the north, at Milwaukee, was located a "horrid set of refractory Indians," according to the picturesque language of Colonel De Peyster, which seems to have been composed of the off-scourings of various tribes and bands. To the west and northwest, in northern Illinois and the state of Wisconsin, were the descendants of the Sacs and Foxes, the Winnebagoes, and other tribes.
[177] James, op. cit., 137; Walker, The Northwest during the Revolution, 12.
The advancing wave of English settlement pouring into the upper Ohio Valley had precipitated the French and Indian War. As yet this tidal wave of civilization had not crossed the Ohio, although it had spread out along its eastern valley as far south as Tennessee. The most important point along this extensive frontier was still, as in the days of the old war. Fort Pitt at the Forks of the Ohio.[178] It was the center, therefore, from which radiated the American efforts to control the northwestern tribes, just as, at a later date, it afforded the principal gateway through which the flood of civilization poured into this region.[179]
[178] James, op. cit., 126.
[179] On the rival efforts to control the northwestern tribes in the early period of the Revolution see ibid., 125 ff.
The Americans at first strove to secure the neutrality of the Indians in the impending contest. But the disposition of the red man did not permit him to stand idly by while a war was going on, and the British more wisely directed their efforts to securing his active support. This policy was shortly copied by the Americans, and soon the perplexed red men were being plied with rival solicitations for alliance, accompanied by corresponding threats of punishment and prophecies of disaster which were to follow their failure to comply. The British urged them on to assail the outlying settlements of the American frontiers, counseling humanity to the vanquished, but effectually nullifying this counsel by offering rewards for all scalps brought in. Lieutenant-governor Hamilton at Detroit was particularly zealous in hounding the Indians on to the work of devastation.[180] The Americans, to their honor, offered rewards for prisoners but none for scalps. Two courses of action were open to the Americans in view of this situation. They might endeavor to punish the hostile Indians by launching retaliatory expeditions against them; or they might by capturing Detroit, from whence issued alike the supplies for the marauders and payment for the scalps they took, destroy the opposition at its fountain-head.[181] The latter course was urged by Colonel Morgan, the Indian agent for the Middle Department, a man of much experience among the Indians of the Northwest. The reasons which he advanced in support of this policy and against the alternative one were telling,[182] but his advice went unheeded. Seeing this, and believing a general Indian war was about to be precipitated, he resigned his office; the control of the Western Department passed into incompetent hands, and it seemed probable that the western frontier was about to be overrun by the British and Indians when an important diversion occurred. The advent of the Virginia "Hannibal," George Rogers Clark, in the Illinois country, compelled the British at Detroit to turn their attention to the defense of the Northwest, and shortly of Detroit itself, against the invader.
[180] James, op. cit.; Thwaites, How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, 8-10. Hamilton himself vigorously denied the charges of inhumanity which the Americans preferred against him. Michigan Pioneer Collections, IX, 490.