A hundred and sixty miles northeast of the
Choctaw towns were the Chickasaws, the bravest and most
successful warriors of all the tribes south of the Iroquois. The
Cherokees, in part seated within the Carolinas, on the upper
courses of the Savannah River, mustered over six thousand men at
arms. East of them were the Catawba towns. North of them were the
Shawanoes and Delawares, in easy communication with the tribes of
Canada. Still farther north, along the Mohawk and other rivers
joining with the Hudson and Lake Ontario stood the "long houses"
of the fiercest and most warlike of all the savages, the Iroquois
or Six Nations.
The Indians along the English borders outnumbered the colonists
perhaps ten to one. If the Spanish and the French had succeeded
in the conspiracy to unite on their side all the tribes, a red
billow of tomahawk wielders would have engulfed and extinguished
the English settlements. The French, it is true, made allies of
the Shawanoes, the Delawares, the Choctaws, and a strong faction
of the Creeks; and they finally won over the Cherokees after
courting them for more than twenty years. But the Creeks in part,
the powerful Chickasaws, and the Iroquois Confederacy, or Six
Nations, remained loyal to the English. In both North and South
it was the influence of the traders that kept these red tribes on
the English side.
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