The British themselves, though
fighting with and for them, loved them but little; like all
frontiersmen, they soon grew to look down on their mean and trivial
lives,--lives which nevertheless strongly attracted white men of evil
and shiftless, but adventurous, natures, and to which white children,
torn from their homes and brought up in the wigwams, became passionately
attached. Yet back of the lazy and drunken squalor lay an element of the
terrible, all the more terrible because it could not be reckoned with.
Dangerous and treacherous allies, upon whom no real dependence could
ever placed, the Indians were nevertheless the most redoubtable of all
foes when the war was waged in their own gloomy woodlands.
The British Officers
At such a post those standing high in authority were partly civil
officials, partly army officers. Of the former, some represented the
provincial government, and others acted for the fur companies. They had
much to do, both in governing the French townsfolk and countryfolk, in
keeping the Indians friendly, and in furthering the peculiar commerce on
which the settlements subsisted. But the important people were the army
officers.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77