In the last two years of the Revolution, when the British were driven from the Back Country of the Carolinas and could no longer reach the tribes with consignments of firearms and powder, it should have been evident that the Indians had other sources of supply and other allies, for they lacked nothing which could aid them in their efforts to exterminate the settlers of Tennessee.
Neither France nor Spain wished to see an English-speaking republic based on ideals of democracy successfully established in America.

Though in the Revolutionary War, France was a close ally of the Americans and Spain something more than a nominal one, the secret diplomacy of the courts of the Bourbon cousins ill matched with their open professions.
Both cousins hated England.

The American colonies, smarting under injustice, had offered a field for their revenge.

But hatred of England was not the only reason why activities had been set afoot to increase the discord which should finally separate the colonies from Great Britain and leave the destiny of the colonies to be decided by the House of Bourbon.

Spain saw in the Americans, with their English modes of thought, a menace to her authority in her own colonies on both the northern and southern continents.