Knox estimated that it would take five thousand American soldiers to patrol the Creek borders, and this at a time when the entire American army was less than half that size. Washington concluded that “scarcely anything short of a Chinese wall…will restrain land jobbers and the encroachment of settlers upon Indian territory.”28 He and Knox had made a promise they could not keep. Indeed, Washington had invested all his enormous prestige in a just resolution of the Native American dilemma, making it the highest priority during his first term as president, but he had failed completely, and he knew
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