By the end of his presidency, Washington had achieved the goals concerning Indians that he had wished to accomplish. Washington's conduct concerning the Southern Indians, particularly the Creeks, during his presidency was considerably different than his conduct regarding the Northern Indians. While he proclaimed that he wanted peace in both areas, it was in the South that he worked for it most carefully. The reasons for this have to do, not with the Indians, but more with the international community and the broader issue of states rights.

War with Spain was not something the Washington administration wanted to tackle. The president thought that a conflict with Spain would be very destructive to the young country, particularly since he desired that eventually the United States would be able to navigate the Mississippi River. While war with Great Britain was a possibility in the Northwest, Washington did not seriously believe that the British planned to go to war to protect the Miami Indians and their allies. In the South, however, it was very likely that Spain could engage the United States in battle. It was of the utmost importance to avoid this eventuality.

The fact that the state of Georgia was openly violating United States laws and the Constitution itself was another reason that Washington did not wish to go to war in the South. Georgia, in its desire to take all the Indian land it thought it wanted, blithely ignored the treaties of Galphington and Hopewell, believing that the United States would let the land speculators populate the disputed lands. Washington firmly believed in the authority of the new federal government, and he did not wish to allow Georgia to brazenly violate the laws of the United States. The Treaty of New York, signed by Washington, broke up the Yazoo land companies' plans in Georgia, and Washington wished that he could have eliminated all the land speculators. Unfortunately, it took more than five years of bloody conflict before Georgia eventually gave in to the desires of the federal government.* At the end of his presidency, Washington was pleased that he was finally able to attain peace on the frontiers of the new nation.

It is clear that Washington did not hate Indians and he would have preferred the Indians and white people to simply stay on each other's side of the line. The compelling factor which tells us that Washington did not really consider the Indians as truly equal when national aspirations conflicted was the way in which he handled both major Indian issues of his presidency. Towards both groups of Indians, Washington expressed his desire for justice and humanity. In the North, where there was little threat of serious foreign intervention, and there was no state to oppose the desires of the federal government, Washington deemed it proper to send a federal fighting force to the area. In the South, the situation was much different, and Washington refused to send troops to fight the Indians**. While his view of the natives may have been somewhat more generous than some of his contemporaries, in the end, Washington thought of the Indians as not much more than objects, often to be pitied, but to be used, or ignored, depending upon the situation at the time and place. In a way, it was the first president's indifference to the needs of the Indians that, indirectly, helped to advance the dubious cause of eventual Indian removal. While he did support their position in the South, it was primarily for reasons other than the Indians themselves (i. e. national character, the Spanish threat, the rights of Georgia versus the rights of the United States), and in the North, where it was perceived that the Indians were in the way, Washington, reluctantly, but nevertheless, forcibly took the land the United States wanted. While Washington probably would have liked to consider himself a friend of the Indians, it is clear that he used them for his own ends, not theirs.