Their chastisement did not result in our gaining new territory; nor would a failure to chastise them have affected the outcome of the war nor the terms of peace.

Their fate was bound up with that of the king's cause in America and was decided wholly by events unconnected with their own success or defeat.
The very reverse was the case with the Indians, tenfold more numerous, who lived along our western frontier.

There they were themselves our main opponents, the British simply acting as their supporters; and instead of their fate being settled by the treaty of peace with Britain, they continued an active warfare for twelve years after it had been signed.

Had they defeated us in the early years of the contest, it is more than probable that the Alleghanies would have been made our western boundary at the peace.

We won from them vast stretches of territory because we had beaten their warriors, and we could not have won it otherwise; whereas the territory of the Iroquois was lost, not because of their defeat, but because of the defeat of the British.
There were two great groups of these Indians, the ethnic corresponding roughly with the geographic division.