When the negotiators met at Paris, in 1782, to arrange terms of peace between Great Britain and the American colonies or states, it was difficult to decide what should be done with the Great Lakes. At first it was suggested that the boundary line between the United States and Canada should be so drawn as to give the territory south of the Ottawa River and Lake Superior to the United States, as far west as the Mississippi. At another time it was proposed that all of the land north of the Ohio and west of the Alleghanies should continue to be English. Finally it was arranged that the Great Lakes, with the exception of Michigan, should form the boundary line between the United States and Canada in that part of the world. This arrangement gave to the United States the posts at Detroit, Mackinac, and other points on the lakes; but the English would not surrender them, justifying their not doing so on the ground that the Americans had broken the treaty in other respects. As long as the British retained the posts in the Northwest, the Indians of that region looked to them for support and were inclined to take up an attitude of hostility to the government of the United States and to colonists, who now came into the Ohio Valley in great numbers. Treaties were made with them, but these the Indians failed to keep, and there ensued a period of confusion and bloodshed on the frontier. Into the details of this petty warfare it is not worth our while to enter. At first the British seemed anxious to preserve peace for the sake of the fur trade, but as time went on and relations between England and the United States became more strained, the English lent undisguised assistance to the Indians. It was inevitable that there should be constant strife between the rough, encroaching frontiersman who overstepped the original boundaries and the jealous, suspicious Indian who met all wrongs by treachery and violence. The record of the years shows a succession of efforts for peace by the United States government and a series of councils, treaties, ruptures, and hostilities on the part of the Indians. A formal government had been organized in the Northwest by the Ordinance of 1787, which created the great Northwest Territory, out of which were later formed the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. By 1789 and 1790 the United States government began to realize that it had to deal in this region with no petty skirmishes with scattered tribes, but with a widespread Indian uprising. Raids and counter-raids must be abandoned, and war with organized armies and carefully planned campaigns must be waged against the lawless hordes of savages who were breaking faith with the white man and murdering whom they pleased.