ABSTRACT
When the new government began operations in the spring of 1789 the most pressing problems in foreign policy were related to the advance of settlement in the Mississippi Valley. Indian resistance was proving a severe obstacle to settlement in both the Northwest and the Southwest, and this resistance was being aided by the British and the Spanish. The new government urgently needed a more effective military force to combat Indian hostility north of the Ohio. It also needed diplomatic negotiations that would secure British and Spanish withdrawal from American territory, and their promise to stop backing the Indians. Settlers in the rapidly expanding settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee were also urging governmental efforts to secure their right to ship goods through Spanish New Orleans to the sea. Their need for this export route was so great that in the 1780s they had shown a willingness to deal separately with the Spanish, raising fears in the East that the new western settlements would be lost to the Union.
