[Footnote: State Dept.MSS., No.

150, vol.ii., Harmar to Le Grasse and Busseron, June 29, 1787.] In his letter to the Creoles he alluded to Clark's Vincennes garrison as "a set of lawless banditti," and explained that his own troops were regulars, who would treat with justice both the French and Indians.

Harmar never made much effort to conceal dislike of the borderers.

In one letter he alludes to a Delaware chief as "a manly old fellow, and much more of a gentleman than the generality of these frontier people." [Footnote: _Do_., Harmar to the Secretary of War, March 9, 1788.] Naturally, there was little love lost between the bitterly prejudiced old army officer, fixed and rigid in all his ideas, and the equally prejudiced backwoodsmen, whose ways of looking at almost all questions were antipodal to his.
The Creoles of the Illinois and Vincennes sent warm letters of welcome to Harmar.

The American settlers addressed him in an equally respectful but very different tone, for, they said, their hearts were filled with "anxiety, gloominess, and dismay." They explained the alarm they felt at the report that they were to be driven out of the country, and protested--what was doubtless true--that they had settled on the land in entire good faith, and with the assent of the French inhabitants.