The English trader did his share to prevent what is now the United States from becoming a part of a Latin empire and to save it for a race having the Anglo-Saxon ideal and speaking the English tongue.
The colonial records of the period contain items which, taken singly, make small impression on the casual reader but which, listed together, throw a strong light on the past and bring that mercenary figure, the trader, into so bold a relief that the design verges on the heroic.

If we wonder, for instance, why the Scotch Highlanders who settled in the wilds at the headwaters of the Cape Fear River, about 1729, and were later followed by Welsh and Huguenots, met with no opposition from the Indians, the mystery is solved when we discover, almost by accident, a few printed lines which record that, in 1700, the hostile natives on the Cape Fear were subdued to the English and brought into friendly alliance with them by Colonel William Bull, a trader.

We read further and learn that the Spaniards in Florida had long endeavored to unite the tribes in Spanish and French territory against the English and that the influence of traders prevented the consummation.

The Spaniards, in 1702, had prepared to invade English territory with nine hundred Indians.

The plot was discovered by Creek Indians and disclosed to their friends, the traders, who immediately gathered together five hundred warriors, marched swiftly to meet the invaders, and utterly routed them.