A History of the American People

By contrast, in American eyes, the British showed a consideration and delicacy towards the
Indians which, the colonists felt, was outrageous. In their eyes, the management of the Indians
was one field in which social engineering (as they called it polity' orpolicing') was not only
desirable but essential. In dealing with the heart of America, now to dispose of as they saw fit,
the British were faced with a genuine dilemma: how to reconcile three conflicting interests-the
fur traders the colonies with their expanding-westward land hunger, and Britain's Indian allies,
such as the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Iroquois. There were enormous areas involved, none
of them properly mapped. Lord Bute, in London, knew nothing about the subject-could not
distinguish between a Cherokee and an Eskimo, though he knew all about highland clans-and
was entirely dependent on on-the-spot experts like Sir William Johnson and John Stuart, who
had Indian interests at heart The government of Pennsylvania had recently used the term West of the Allegheny Mountains,' to denote land reserved for the Indians, presumably in perpetuity. The pro-Indian interest seized on this and persuaded the British government to apply it to the whole of North America. A royal proclamation of October 7, 1763 laid down the new boundary to separate the colonies from land reserved to the Indians. It forbade Americans to settle inany
lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the
West or Northwest. In effect this would have created an Atlantic fringe America, inwardly
blocked by an Indian interior. That was anathema to the colonies-it destroyed their future, at a
stroke. In any case, it was out of date; countless settlers were already over the watershed, well
dug in, and were being joined by more every day. The Proclamation noted this point and, to
please the Indians, laid down that any `who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated
themselves upon any lands [beyond the line] must forthwith ... remove themselves.' This was
more attempted social engineering, and with heavily armed settlers already scattered and farming
over vast distances, there was no question of herding them east except at the point of the
bayonet. To make matters worse, British Indian allies were permitted to remain in strength and in
large areas well to the east of the line.
The Great Proclamation in short was not a practical document. It enraged and frightened the
colonists without being enforceable; indeed it had to be altered, in 1771, to adjust to realities, by
conceding settlement along the Ohio from the Great Forks (Fort Pitt or Pittsburgh) to the
Kentucky River, thus blowing a great hole in the entire concept and in effect removing any
possible dam to mass westward expansion The Proclamation was one of Britain's cardinal errors.
Just at the moment when the expulsion of the French had entirely removed American
dependence on British military power, and any conceivable obstacle to the expansion of the
colonies into the boundless lands of the interior, the men in London were proposing to replace
the French by the Indians and deny the colonies access. It made no sense, and it looked like a
deliberate insult to American sensibilities.
One American who was particularly upset by the Proclamation was George Washington. He
saw himself as a frontiersman as well as a tidewater landowner. Access to land on the frontier
was his particular future, as well as America's. The idea of consigning America's interior to the
Indians for ever struck him as ridiculous, flying in the face of all the evidence and ordinary
common sense. He disliked the Indians and regarded them as volatile, untrustworthy, cruel,
improvident, feckless, and in every way undependable. He shared with every one of the
Founding Fathers-this is an important point to note-a conviction that the interests of the Indians
must not be allowed to stand in the way of America's development. We should not think of
Washington as a natural rebel or an instinctive republican. Like most Americans of his class, he
was neither. Like most of them, he was ambivalent about England, its crown, its institutions, and