Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 4).djvu/116

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112
BRADDOCK'S ROAD

numbered less than a dozen. Braddock has been severely blamed for his neglect of the Indians, but any earnest study of this campaign will assure the student that the commanding general was no more at fault here than for the failure of the contractors and the indifference of the colonies. He had been promised Indians as freely as stores and horses and wagons. The Indian question seems to have been handled most wretchedly since Washington's late campaign. Through the negligence of the busy-body Dinwiddie (so eager for so many unimportant matters) even the majority of the Indians who served Washington faithfully and had followed his retreating army back to Virginia were allowed to drift back to the French through sheer neglect. As none of Dinwiddie's promises were fulfilled in this respect Braddock turned in despair to Morris for such Ohio Indians as were living in Pennsylvania. There had been at least three hundred Indians of the Six Nations living in that province, but in April the Pennsylvania Assembly had resolved to "do nothing more for them"; accordingly they went westward and most