Illegal settlers, called squatters, had been encroaching on the lands now the Midwest for years before the founding of the United States of America, pushing further and further down the Ohio River during the 1760s and 1770s and inciting conflict and competition with the Native Americans whose lands they intruded on every step of the way. These squatters were characterized by British General, Thomas Gage, as "too Numerous, too Lawless, and Licentious ever to be restrained," and regarded them as "almost out of Reach of Law and government; Neither the Endeavors of Government, or Fear of Indians has kept them properly within Bounds." The British had a long-standing goal of establishing an Native American buffer state in the American Midwest to resist American expansion in British Canada.