[The Winning of the West, Volume Four by Theodore Roosevelt]@TWC D-Link bookThe Winning of the West, Volume Four CHAPTER III 31/98
By means of this fort they intended to control all the territory enclosed between the rivers Mississippi, Yazoo, Chickasaw, and Mobile.
The Spaniards also expended large sums of money in arming the Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were quite willing to do of their own accord,--that is, to prevent the demarkation of the boundary line as provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which Carondelet reported to his Court as "insulting and pernicious to Spain, the abrogation of which has lately been brought about by the intrigues with the Indians." [Footnote: Draper MSS., Letter of Carondelet, New Orleans, Sept.
25, 1795.] Carondelet's Policy. At the same time that the bill for these expenses was submitted for audit to the home government the Spanish Governor also submitted his accounts for the expenses in organizing the expedition against the "English adventurer Bowles," and in negotiating with Wilkinson and the other Kentucky Separatists, and also in establishing a Spanish post at the Chickasaw Bluffs, for which he had finally obtained the permission of the Chickasaws.
The Americans of course regarded the establishment both of the fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs and the fort at Nogales as direct challenges; and Carondelet's accounts show that the frontiersmen were entirely justified in their belief that the Spaniards not only supplied the Creeks with arms and munitions of war, but actively interfered to prevent them from keeping faith and carrying out the treaties which they had signed.
The Spaniards did not wish the Indians to go to war unless it was necessary as a last resort.
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