to believe that unscrupulous Indians might have so deceived the government officials and wronged the Indians, but that this could have occurred on three occasions was manifestly absurd. The Ohio Company purchase and the Symmes purchase had been made, the pioneers had emigrated and settled the lands. The Government had given no white man right to cross the treaty line. Those settlements could not be uprooted without great injustice. The war seemed, therefore, an imperative necessity, and the Government had no honorable alternative if peace efforts failed. We have had many dealings with the Indians since 1790, and it is of some comfort to rest assured that our first Indian war was eminently just and right.
Unless otherwise ordered, Brigadier-general Scott of Kentucky was to make a dash at the Indian villages on the upper Wabash in the early summer. A little later General Wilkinson was scheduled to lead another raiding band to the populous settlement on the Eel River, a northern tributary of the Wabash. These swift strokes, it was hoped, would compel the Indians to confer con-
