They preferred that they should be peaceful, provided always they could prevent the intrusion of the Americans.

Carondelet wrote: "We have inspired the Creeks with pacific intentions towards the United States, but with the precise restriction that there shall be no change of the boundaries," [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Docs.; Carondelet's Report, Oct.

23, 1793.] and he added that "to sustain our allied nations [of Indians] in the possession of their lands becomes therefore indispensable, both to preserve Louisiana to Spain, and in order to keep the Americans from the navigation of the Gulf." He expressed great uneasiness at the efforts of Robertson to foment war between the Chickasaws and Choctaws and the Creeks, and exerted all his powers to keep the Indian nations at peace with one another and united against the settler-folk.

[Footnote: _Do_., Carondelet to Don Louis De Las Casas, June 13, 1795, enclosing letter from Don M.G.De Lemos, Governor of Natchez.] The Spaniards far more Treacherous than the British.
The Spaniards, though with far more infamous and deliberate deceit and far grosser treachery, were pursuing towards the United States and the Southwestern Indians the policy pursued by the British towards the United States and the Northwestern Indians; with the difference that the Spanish Governor and his agents acted under the orders of the Court of Spain, while the English authorities connived at and profited by, rather than directly commanded, what was done by their subordinates.

Carondelet expressly states that Colonel Gayoso and his other subordinates had been directed to unite the Indian nations in a defensive alliance, under the protection of Spain, with the object of opposing Blount, Robertson, and the frontiersmen, and of establishing the Cumberland River as the boundary between the Americans and the Indians.