While the Indians were an incumbrance to Burgoyne's army during his whole campaign, and forsook him in the eventful hour when he most needed them, their barbarities contributed greatly to swell the revolutionary army, and to alienate great numbers of Loyalists, weakening Burgoyne's army in the very country where he expected most support from the inhabitants, and giving the American general, Gates, a great preponderance of strength over him--the army of Burgoyne being reduced to 3,500 men fit for actual service, while that of Gates was increased to upwards of 16,000 fit for actual service.[83]
But if the British exceeded the Americans in gaining the greater part of the Indians to their cause, and the corresponding disgrace and disadvantage of their accompanying the army, the Americans far outdid the English and the Indians themselves in the work of desolation and destruction. Dr. Ramsay remarks:
"The undisturbed tranquillity which took place in South Carolina and the adjacent States after the British had failed in their designs against them in the spring and summer of 1776, gave an opportunity of carrying war into the Indian country. This was done, not so much to punish what was past, as to prevent all future co-operation between the Indians and British in that quarter. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia sent about the same time a considerable force, which traversed the Indian settlements, burned their towns, and destroyed their fields of corn. Above 500 of the Cherokees were obliged, from want of provisions, to take refuge in Florida, and were fed at the expense of the British Government."[84]
It is to be observed that this was not an invasion of the white settlements by the Indians, but an invasion of the Indian settlements by the whites; it was a "carrying war into the Indian country;" it was not provoked by the Indians, but "was done to prevent all future co-operation between the Indians and British in that quarter." Yet this war of _invasion_, this war of _precaution_, was also a war more destructive to the Indians than any which they, even under the French, had inflicted on the white colonists; for not an Indian cornfield was left undestroyed, nor an Indian habitation unconsumed.