Large as the Creek country was, and wild as it had ever been, it did not abound in game. A good hunter, passing in any direction through the three hundred miles of Alabama and Georgia, found difficulty in obtaining game enough for his support.[314] For that reason the Seminoles left their old towns and became wild people, as their name implied, making irregular settlements in Florida, where game and food were more plenty. The mass of the Creek nation, fixed in the villages in the interior, clung to their habits of hunting even when obliged to cultivate the soil, and their semi-civilization rendered them a more perplexing obstacle to the whites than though they had obstinately resisted white influence. Had the Indian problem been left to the people of Georgia and Tennessee, the Indians would soon have disappeared; but the national government established under President Washington in 1789 put a sharp curb on Georgia, and interposed decisively between the Georgians and the Creeks.[315] President Washington in 1796 appointed Benjamin Hawkins of North Carolina as Indian agent among the Creeks, and Hawkins protected and governed them with devotion; but the result of his friendliness was the same as that of others’ greed. The Indians slowly lost ground. The Creeks complained of grievances similar to those of the Northwestern Indians, and their position was even more helpless. They had no other outlet than Pensacola and Mobile. Except from the Spaniards they could expect no aid in case of trouble, and the Spanish governors of Florida, after the abdication of Carlos IV. in 1807, could scarcely maintain their own position, much less supply the Creeks with arms or gunpowder. While the Northwestern Indians could buy at Malden all the weapons and ammunition they wanted, the Creeks possessed few firearms, and these in bad condition; nor were they skilful in using guns.