Other circumstances too, combined in their operation, to produce this result. The plan of Lord Dunmore and others, to induce the Indians to co-operate with the English in reducing Virginia to subjection, and defeated by the detection and apprehension of Connoly, was soon after resumed on a more extensive scale. British agents were busily engaged from Canada to the Gulph of Mexico, in endeavoring by immediate presents and the promise of future reward, to excite the savages to a war upon the western frontiers. To accomplish this object, no means which were likely to be of any avail, were neglected to be used. Gratified resentment and the certainty of plunder, were held up to view as present consequences of this measure; and the expulsion of the whites, and the repossession, by the Natives, of the country from which their fathers had been ejected, as its ultimate result.--Less cogent motives might have enlisted them on the side of Great Britain. These were too strong to be resisted by them, and too powerful to be counteracted by any course of conduct, which the colonies could observe towards them; and they became ensnared by the delusive bait, and the insidious promises which accompanied it. There were in the colonies too, many persons, who from principle or fear, were still attached to the cause of Great Britain; and who not only, did not sanction the opposition of their country to the supremacy of Parliament, but were willing in any wise to lend their aid to the royal cause. Some of those disaffected Americans, (as they were at first denominated) who resided on the frontiers, foreseeing the [141] attachment of the Indians to the side of Britain, and apprehensive that in their inroads, the friends as well as the enemies of that country, might, from the difficulty of discriminating, be exposed to savage fury; and at the same time, sensible that they had become obnoxious to a majority of their neighbors, who were perhaps, too much inclined to practice summary modes of punishment, sought a refuge among the Indians, from those impending evils. In some instances, these persons were under the influence of the most rancorous and vindictive passions, and when once with the savages, strove to infuse those passions into their breasts, and stimulate them to the repetition of those enormities, which had previously, so terribly annoyed the inhabitants of the different frontiers.[1] Thus wrought upon, their inculcated enmity to the Anglo-Americans generally, roused them to action, and the dissonant notes of the war song, resounded in their villages. For a while indeed, they refrained from hostilities against North Western Virginia. It was however, but to observe the progress of passing events, that they might act against the mountain borders, simultaneously with the British on the Atlantic coast; as a premature movement on their part, might, while Virginia was yet at liberty to bear down upon them with concentrated forces,