The commander-in-chief of the British forces in North
America, Sir Jeffery Amherst, despised the red men. They
were 'only fit to live with the inhabitants of the woods,
being more nearly allied to the Brute than to the Human
creation.' Other British officers had much the same
attitude. Colonel Henry Bouquet, on a suggestion made to
him by Amherst that blankets infected with small-pox
might be distributed to good purpose among the savages,
not only fell in with Amherst's views, but further proposed
that dogs should be used to hunt them down. 'You will do
well,' Amherst wrote to Bouquet, 'to try to inoculate
the Indians by means of Blankets as well as to try every
other method that can serve to extirpate this Execrable
Race. I should be very glad if your scheme for hunting
them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at
too great a Distance to think of that at present.' And
Major Henry Gladwyn, who, as we shall see, gallantly held
Detroit through months of trying siege, thought that the
unrestricted sale of rum among the Indians would extirpate
them more quickly than powder and shot, and at less cost.
There was, however, one British officer, at least, in
America who did not hold such views towards the natives
of the soil.
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