In April, Colonel Timothy Pickering was also sent to the Senecas, and, meeting them in convention at Painted Post, urged the chieftains to hold back the young men from joining the hostile tribes. Governor St. Clair likewise sent messages, especially to the western tribes urging that hostile bands be withdrawn from the frontier ere the United States should be compelled to bring heavy chastisement. But peace is sometimes as costly, and more so, than war; such proved to be the case now. It was early believed by the most farsighted that a crushing defeat of the northwestern confederacy would be a great saving of blood. And so while peaceful efforts were being forwarded as effectually as the situation of the distant tribes and the hostility of English agents permitted, warlike preparations were likewise being made. As the spring of 1791 opened, the frontiers were overrun with murderous bands and the cry from the infant West to the central government could not be unheeded. "I most earnestly implore the protection of government," wrote the brave Putnam to Washington, "for myself and friends inhabiting these wilds of America." The cry from Kentucky and the lower Ohio was equally piercing. The plan of the United States at this juncture was wholly in keeping with its dignity and its power. Failing in an attempt of reconciliation, it was determined to throw into the Indian land several raiding bands of horsemen "to demonstrate that they [the savages] were within our reach, and lying at our mercy."[88] In case these strokes did not awe the offenders, a grand campaign on an extensive scale was to be inaugurated. Fearing the worst, though hopeful of the better, preparations for all these movements were put on foot, to be countermanded if peaceful measures sufficed. The attitude of the Government at this serious crisis of its first Indian war must be judged humane and generous. The Indians protested that they had never ceded an inch of territory northwest of the Ohio; yet at four treaties supposed representatives of all the nations concerned had received from American commissioners payment for all lands now (1791) occupied or claimed by the white men. In each case the nations had been formally invited to each treaty; they now averred that only irresponsible chieftains had signed these treaties. In a single instance it is possible to believe that unscrupulous Indians might have so deceived the government officials and wronged the Indians, but that this could have occurred on three occasions was manifestly absurd. The Ohio Company purchase and the Symmes purchase had been made, the pioneers had emigrated and settled the lands. The Government had given no white man right to cross the treaty line. Those settlements could not be uprooted without great injustice. The war seemed, therefore, an imperative necessity, and the Government had no honorable alternative if peace efforts failed. We have