We
read further and learn that the Spaniards in Florida had long
endeavored to unite the tribes in Spanish and French territory
against the English and that the influence of traders prevented
the consummation. The Spaniards, in 1702, had prepared to invade
English territory with nine hundred Indians. The plot was
discovered by Creek Indians and disclosed to their friends, the
traders, who immediately gathered together five hundred warriors,
marched swiftly to meet the invaders, and utterly routed them.
Again, when the Indians, incited by the Spanish at St. Augustine,
rose against the English in 1715, and the Yamasi Massacre
occurred in South Carolina, it was due to the traders that some
of the settlements at least were not wholly unprepared to defend
themselves.
The early English trader was generally an intelligent man;
sometimes educated, nearly always fearless and resourceful. He
knew the one sure basis on which men of alien blood and far
separated stages of moral and intellectual development can meet
in understanding--namely, the truth of the spoken word. He
recognized honor as the bond of trade and the warp and woof of
human intercourse. The uncorrupted savage also had his plain
interpretation of the true word in the mouths of men, and a name
for it.
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