This was extremely valuable, and, as it steadily increased in extent and importance, the consequence of Detroit, the fitting-out town for the fur traders, grew in like measure.

It was the centre of a population of several thousand Canadians, who lived by the chase and by the rude cultivation of their long, narrow farms; and it was held by a garrison of three or four hundred British regulars, with auxiliary bands of American loyalist and French Canadian rangers, and, above all, with a formidable but fluctuating reserve force of Indian allies.

[Footnote: Haldimand Papers, 1784, 5, 6.] The British Aid the Indians.
It was to the interest of the British to keep the American settlers out of the land; and therefore their aims were at one with those of the Indians.

All the tribes between the Ohio and the Missouri were subsidized by them, and paid them a precarious allegiance.

Fickle, treacherous, and ferocious, the Indians at times committed acts of outrage even on their allies, so that these allies had to be ever on their guard; and the tribes were often at war with one another.