The conflict between the Proprietors and the planters over Indian slavery was embittered by a clash of trading interests. With their stake in the inland peltry trade, the Proprietors opposed wars and the slave-traffic for selfish as well as humanitarian reasons. The colonists, indeed, gave them little credit for benevolence, and this cynicism found some support in the fact that proprietary opposition to Indian slavery waxed and waned with the rise and decline of their trading regime. Moreover, they never developed similar scruples with regard to the Guinea trade. The Westo War undermined the proprietary Indian traffic and inaugurated an orgy of slavedealing which drew down the wrath of the proprietary board.