A battle royal was now on between the proprietors, with perhaps a small number of sympathizers in the parliament, on the one hand, and the council and traders on the other. The proprietors made inquiries regarding the selling of Indians both from the council and from private individuals.[620] In a letter, September 30, 1686, also, they set forth their dissatisfaction with the condition of affairs and asserted their belief that “the private gains made by some by buying slaves of the Indians had more to do with the opinion that they ought to be transported than any consideration of public safety or benefit.”[621] The dealers in Indians stated three reasons for the traffic: that the Savannah, having united all their tribes, had become so powerful that it was dangerous to disoblige them; that South Carolina was at war with the Waniah in which the Savannah assisted; that humanity decreed the buying of their slaves to keep them from “a cruel death”. These reasons for the traffic were held by the proprietors to be unsound. They declared the buying of slaves from the Savannah alone, and the forbidding of such buying from the other Indians would serve not only to keep the Savannah united, but would join the other tribes to them and so strengthen them that they would be a danger to the colony. The war with the Waniah, they thought, had been the result of a quarrel that the whites picked for the purpose of obtaining Indians to transport. If the Savannah were to take captive the Waniah and sell them to the dealers in Indians, it was only to those few dealers who had a share in the government. These dealers had resorted to subterfuge in order to force the Savannah to sell only to them. The emissaries of peace sent by the Westo and the Waniah to the Savannah, declared the proprietors, had been seized by the last named and sold to the dealers, thus prolonging both the Waniah and the Westo wars, and likely to cause other wars. By purchasing slaves from the Savannah, also, these Indians were encouraged to make raids upon their weaker neighbors. Such activities when discussed in England prevented settlers from going to South Carolina, fearing lest the runaway negroes could not be brought back on so large a continent unless the Indians were preserved. Finally, said the proprietors, God’s blessing could not be expected on a government so managed.[622]