From the first, Spotswood shewed a keen and enlightened interest in the problems of the frontier. His efforts to expand the settlements westerly and to subdue the Indians did not always meet with co-operation from the Virginia legislature, controlled by representatives of the more protected and densely settled tidewater sections, whose people, the "Tuckahoes" as they were called, were frequently unresponsive to the plight of those in the upper country; and from time to time Spotswood's impatience with his legislators boiled up into strong and bluntly worded reproof. To one of his assemblies, recalcitrant in Indian affairs, he addressed his well remembered words of dismissal: "In fine I cannot but attribute these miscarriages to the people's mistaken choice of a set of representatives whom Heaven has not ... endowed with the ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators; and therefore I dissolve you." A few Spotswoods, scattered here and there in the seats of the mighty of our modern America, might not prove inefficacious. In May, 1717, we find him reporting upon the Indian situation to Paul Methuen, the then English Secretary of State, that though the English had carefully kept the terms of Lord Howard's Treaty of 1685, the Iroquois "had committed divers hostilitys on our ffrontiers, in 1713 they rob-d our Indian Traders of a considerable cargo of Goods, the same year they murdered a Gent'n of Acco't near his out Plantations; they carried away some slaves belonging to our Inhabitants, and now threaten not only to destroy our Tributary Indians but the English also in their neighbourhood." He adds that such conduct requires "some Reparation" and asks the Secretary to instruct the Governor of New York to cause his Iroquois to "forebear hostilitys on the King's subjects of the neighbouring Colonies and likewise any nation of Indians under their protection."[7] [7] _Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood._ Virginia Historical Society, 1882. Neither by temperament nor training was Spotswood a man to acquiesce in such conditions. After consulting with and urging co-operation upon the Governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, he set out in the winter of 1717-'18 for New York "to demand something more substantial than the bare promises of the Chief men of those Indians, w'ch they are always very liberal of, in expectation of presents from the English, while at the same time their young men are committing their usual depredations upon ye Frontiers of these Southern Governments." He was fortunate in arriving in New York "very opportunely to prevent the march of a Great Body of those Indians w'ch I had Advice on the Road was intended chiefly against the Tributaries of this Governm't, and the Governor of New York's Messengers overtook them upon their march and obtained their promise to Abstain from any hostilitys on the English Governments."