John Sevier.  John Sevier had no sooner returned from doing his share in defeating foes who were of his own race, than he was called on to face another set of enemies, quite as formidable and much more cruel.  These were the red warriors, the ancient owners of the soil, who were ever ready to take advantage of any momentary disaster that befell their hereditary and victorious opponents, the invading settlers.

For many years Sevier was the best Indian fighter on the border.  He was far more successful than Clark, for instance, inflicting greater loss on his foes and suffering much less himself, though he never had any thing like Clark’s number of soldiers.  His mere name was a word of dread to the Cherokees, the Chickamaugas, and the upper Creeks.  His success was due to several causes.  He wielded great influence over his own followers, whose love for and trust in “Chucky Jack” were absolutely unbounded; for he possessed in the highest degree the virtues most prized on the frontier.  He was open-hearted and hospitable, with winning ways towards all, and combined a cool head with a dauntless heart; he loved a battle for its own sake, and was never so much at his ease as when under fire; he was a first-class marksman, and as good a horseman as was to be found on the border.  In his campaigns against the Indians he adopted the tactics of his foes, and grafted on them some important improvements of his own.  Much of his success was due to his adroit use of scouts or spies.  He always chose for these the best woodsmen of the district, men who could endure as much, see as much, and pass through the woods as silently, as the red men themselves.  By keeping these scouts well ahead of him, he learned accurately where the war parties were.  In the attack itself he invariably used mounted riflemen, men skilled in forest warfare, who rode tough little horses, on which they galloped at speed through the forest.  Once in position they did the actual fighting on foot, sheltering themselves carefully behind the tree-trunks.  He moved with extreme rapidity and attacked with instantaneous suddenness, using ambushes and surprises wherever practicable.  His knowledge of the whereabouts and size of the hostile parties, and the speed of his own movements, generally enabled him to attack with the advantage of numbers greatly on his side. He could then outflank or partially surround the Indians, while his sudden rush demoralized them; so that, in striking contrast to most other Indian fighters, he inflicted a far greater loss than he received.  He never fought a big pitched battle, but, by incessantly harrying and scattering the different war bands, he struck such terror to the hearts of the Indians that he again and again, in a succession of wars, forced them into truces, and for the moment freed the settlements from their ravages.  He was almost the only commander on the frontier who ever brought an Indian war, of whatever length, to an end, doing a good deal of damage to his foes and suffering very little himself.  Still, he never struck a crushing blow, nor conquered a permanent peace.  He never did any thing to equal Clark’s campaigns in the Illinois and against Vincennes, and, of course, he cannot for a moment be compared to his rival and successor, grim Old Hickory, the destroyer of the Creeks and the hero of New Orleans.

    Sevier’s Cherokee Campaigns.

When the men of the Holston or upper Tennessee valley settlements reached their homes after the King’s Mountain expedition, they found them menaced by the Cherokees.  Congress had endeavored in vain to persuade the chiefs of this tribe to make a treaty of peace, or at least to remain neutral.  The efforts of the British agents to embroil them with the whites were completely successful; and in November the Otari or Overhill warriors began making inroads along the frontier.  They did not attack in large bands.  A constant succession of small parties moved swiftly through the county, burning cabins, taking scalps, and, above all, stealing horses.  As the most effectual way of stopping such inroads, the alarmed and angered settlers resolved to send a formidable retaliatory expedition against the Overhill towns. All the Holston settlements both north and south of the Virginia line joined in sending troops.  By the first week in December, 1780, seven hundred mounted riflemen were ready to march, under the joint leadership of Colonel Arthur Campbell and of Sevier, the former being the senior officer.  They were to meet at an appointed place on the French Broad.

Sevier started first, with between two and three hundred of his Watauga and Nolichucky followers.  He marched down to the French Broad, but could hear nothing of Campbell.  He was on the great war trace of the southern Indians, and his scouts speedily brought him word that they had exchanged shots with a Cherokee war party, on its way to the settlements, and not far distant on the other side of the river.  He instantly crossed, and made a swift march towards the would-be marauders, camping on Boyd’s Creek.  The scouts were out by sunrise next morning ­December 16th, ­and speedily found the Indian encampment, which the warriors had just left.  On receipt of the news Sevier ordered the scouts to run on, attack the Indians, and then instantly retreat, so as to draw them into an ambuscade.  Meanwhile the main body followed cautiously after, the men spread out in a long line, with the wings advanced; the left wing under Major Jesse Walton, the right under Major Jonathan Tipton, while Sevier himself commanded the centre, which advanced along the trail by which the scouts were to retreat.  When the Indians were drawn into the middle, the two wings were to close in, when the whole party would be killed or captured.

The plan worked well.  The scouts soon came up with the warriors, and, after a moment’s firing, ran back, with the Indians in hot pursuit.  Sevier’s men lay hid, and, when the leading warriors were close up, they rose and fired.  Walton’s wing closed in promptly; but Tipton was too slow, and the startled Cherokees ran off through the opening he had left, rushed into a swamp impassable for horsemen, and scattered out, each man for himself, being soon beyond pursuit.  Nevertheless, Sevier took thirteen scalps, many weapons, and all their plunder.  In some of their bundles there were proclamations from Sir Henry Clinton and other British commanders.

The Indians were too surprised and panic-struck to offer any serious resistance, and not a man of Sevier’s force was even wounded. [Footnote:  Campbell MSS.  Copy of the official report of Col.  Arthur Campbell, Ja, 1781.  The accounts of this battle of Boyd’s Creek illustrate well the growth of such an affair under the hands of writers who place confidence in all kinds of tradition, especially if they care more for picturesqueness than for accuracy.  The contemporary official report is explicit.  There were three hundred whites and seventy Indians.  Of the latter, thirteen were slain.  Campbell’s whole report shows a jealousy of Sevier, whom he probably knew well enough was a man of superior ability to himself; but this jealousy appears mainly in the coloring.  He does not change any material fact, and there is no reason for questioning the substantial truth of his statements.

Forty years afterward Haywood writes of the affair, trying to tell simply the truth, but obliged to rely mainly on oral tradition.  He speaks of Sevier’s troops as only two hundred in number; and says twenty-eight Indians were killed.  He does not speak of the number of the Indians, but from the way he describes Sevier’s troops as encircling them, he evidently knew that the white men were more numerous than their foes.  His mistake as to the number of Indian dead is easily explicable.  The official report gives twenty-nine as the number killed in the entire campaign, and Haywood, as in the Island Flats battle, simply puts the total of several skirmishes into one.

Thirty years later comes Ramsey.  He relies on traditions that have grown more circumstantial and less accurate.  He gives two accounts of what he calls “one of the best-fought battles in the border war of Tennessee”; one of these accounts is mainly true; the other entirely false; he does not try to reconcile them.  He says three whites were wounded, although the official report says that in the whole campaign but one man was killed and two wounded.  He reduces Sevier’s force to one hundred and seventy men, and calls the Indians “a large body.”

Thirty-four years later comes Mr. Kirke, with the “Rear-guard of the Revolution.”  Out of his inner consciousness he evolves the fact that there were “not less than a thousand” Indians, whom Sevier, at the head of one hundred and seventy men, vanquishes, after a heroic combat, in which Sevier and some others perform a variety of purely imaginary feats.  By diminishing the number of the whites, and increasing that of the Indians, he thus makes the relative force of the latter about twenty-five times as great as it really was, and converts a clever ambuscade, whereby the whites gave a smart drubbing to a body of Indians one fourth their own number, into a Homeric victory over a host six times as numerous as the conquerors.

This is not a solitary instance; on the contrary it is typical of almost all that is gravely set forth as history by a number of writers on these western border wars, whose books are filled from cover to cover with just such matter.  Almost all their statements are partly, and very many are wholly, without foundation.]Having thus made a very pretty stroke, Sevier returned to the French Broad, where Campbell joined him on the 22d, with four hundred troops.  Among them were a large number of Shelby’s men, under the command of Major Joseph Martin.  The next day the seven hundred horsemen made a forced march to the Little Tennessee; and on the 24th crossed it unopposed, making a feint at one ford, while the main body passed rapidly over another.  The Indians did not have the numbers to oppose so formidable a body of good fighters, and only ventured on a little very long range and harmless skirmishing with the vanguard.  Dividing into two bodies, the troops destroyed Chota and the other towns up and down the stream, finding in them a welcome supply of provisions.  The next day Martin, with a detachment, fell on a party of flying Indians, killed one, and captured seventeen horses loaded with clothing, skins, and the scanty household furniture of the cabins; while another detachment destroyed the part of Chilhowee that was on the nearer side of the river.  On the 26th the rest of Chilhowee was burned, three Indians killed, and nine captured.  Tipton, with one hundred and fifty men, was sent to attack another town beyond the river; but owing to the fault of their commander, this body failed to get across.  The Indian woman, Nancy Ward, who in ’76 had given the settlers timely warning of the intended attack by her tribesmen here came into camp.  She brought overtures of peace from the chiefs; but to these Campbell and Sevier would not listen, as they wished first to demolish the Hiawassee towns, where the warriors had been especially hostile.  Accordingly, they marched thither.  On their way there were a couple of skirmishes, in which several Indians were killed and one white man.  The latter, whose name was Elliot, was buried in the Tellico town, a cabin being burned down over his grave, that the Indians might not know where it was.  The Indians watched the army from the hills.  At one point a warrior was seen stationed on a ridge to beat a drum and give signals to the rest; but the spies of the whites stole on him unawares, and shot him.  The Hiawassee towns and all the stores of provisions they contained were destroyed, the work being finished on the last day of the year.

On January 1, 1781, the army broke up into detachments which went home by different routes, some additional towns being destroyed.  The Indians never ventured to offer the invaders a pitched battle.  Many of the war parties were absent on the frontier, and, at the very time their own country was being invaded, they committed ravages in Powell’s Valley, along the upper Holston, and on the Kentucky road, near Cumberland Gap.  The remaining warriors were cowed by Sevier’s first success, and were puzzled by the rapidity with which the troops moved; for the mounted riflemen went at speed wherever they wished, and were not encumbered by baggage, each man taking only his blanket and a wallet of parched corn.

All the country of the Overhill Cherokees was laid waste, a thousand cabins were burned, and fifty thousand bushels of corn destroyed.  Twenty-nine warriors in all were killed, and seventeen women and children captured, not including the family of Nancy Ward, who were treated as friends, not prisoners.  But one white man was killed and two wounded. [Footnote:  Campbell MSS.  Arthur Campbell’s official report.  The figures of the cabins and corn destroyed are probably exaggerated.  All the Tennessee historians, down to Phelan, are hopelessly in the dark over this campaign.  Haywood actually duplicates it (pp. 63 and 99) recounting it first as occurring in ’79, and then with widely changed incidents as happening in ’8l ­making two expeditions.  When he falls into such a tremendous initial error, it is not to be wondered at that the details he gives are very untrustworthy.  Ramsey corrects Haywood as far as the two separate expeditions are concerned, but he makes a number of reckless statements apparently on no better authority than the traditions current among the border people, sixty or seventy years after the event.  These stand on the same foundation with the baseless tale that makes Isaac Shelby take part in the battle of Island Flats.  The Tennessee historians treat Sevier as being the chief commander; but he was certainly under Campbell; the address they sent out to the Indians is signed by Campbell first, Sevier second, and Martin third.  Haywood, followed by Ramsey, says that Sevier marched to the Chickamauga towns, which he destroyed, and then marched down the Coosa to the region of the Cypress Swamps.  But Campbell’s official report says that the towns “in the neighborhood of Chickamauga and the Town of Cologn, situated on the sources of the Mobile” were not destroyed, nor visited, and he carefully enumerates all the towns that the troops burned and the regions they went through.  They did not go near Chickamauga nor the Coosa.  Unless there is some documentary evidence in favor of the assertions of Haywood and Ramsey they cannot for a moment be taken against the explicit declaration of the official report.

Mr. Kirke merely follows Ramsey, and adds a few flourishes of his own, such as that at the Chickamauga towns “the blood of the slaughtered cattle dyed red the Tennessee” for some twenty miles, and that “the homes of over forty thousand people were laid in ashes.”  This last estimate is just about ten times too strong, for the only country visited was that of the Overhill Cherokees, and the outside limit for the population of the devastated territory would be some four thousand souls, or a third of the Cherokee tribe, which all told numbered perhaps twelve thousand people.]

In the burnt towns, and on the dead warriors, were found many letters and proclamations from the British agents and commanders, showing that almost every chief in the nation had been carrying on a double game; for the letters covered the periods at which they had been treating with the Americans and earnestly professing their friendship for the latter and their determination to be neutral in the contest then waging.  As Campbell wrote in his report to the Virginian governor, no people had ever acted with more foolish duplicity.

Before returning, the three commanders, Campbell, Sevier, and Martin, issued an address to the Otari chiefs and warriors, and sent it by one of their captured braves, who was to deliver it to the head-men. The address set forth what the white troops had done, telling the Indians it was a just punishment for their folly and perfidy in consenting to carry out the wishes of the British agents; it warned them shortly to come in and treat for peace, lest their country should again be visited, and not only laid waste, but conquered and held for all time.  Some chiefs came in to talk, and were met at Chota; but though they were anxious for peace they could not restrain the vindictive spirit of the young braves, nor prevent them from harassing the settlements.  Nor could the white commanders keep the frontiersmen from themselves settling within the acknowledged boundaries of the Indian territory.  They were constantly pressing against the lines, and eagerly burst through at every opening.  When the army marched back from burning the Overhill towns, they found that adventurous settlers had followed in its wake, and had already made clearings and built cabins near all the best springs down to the French Broad.  People of every rank showed keen desire to encroach on the Indian lands.

The success of this expedition gave much relief to the border, and was hailed with pleasure throughout Virginia and North Carolina.  Nevertheless the war continued without a break, bands of warriors from the middle towns coming to the help of their disheartened Overhill brethren.  Sevier determined to try one of his swift, sudden strokes against these new foes.  Early in March he rode off at the head of a hundred and fifty picked horsemen, resolute to penetrate the hitherto untrodden wilds that shielded the far-off fastnesses where dwelt the Erati.  Nothing shows his daring, adventurous nature more clearly than his starting on such an expedition; and only a man of strong will and much power could have carried it to a successful conclusion.  For a hundred and fifty miles he led his horsemen through a mountainous wilderness where there was not so much as a hunter’s trail.  They wound their way through the deep defiles and among the towering peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, descending by passes so precipitous that it was with difficulty the men led down them even such surefooted beasts as their hardy hill-horses.  At last they burst out of the woods and fell like a thunderbolt on the towns of the Erati, nestling in their high gorges.  The Indians were completely taken by surprise; they had never dreamed that they could be attacked in their innermost strongholds, cut off, as they were, from the nearest settlements by vast trackless wastes of woodland and lofty, bald-topped mountain chains.  They had warriors enough to overwhelm Sevier’s band by sheer force of numbers, but he gave them no time to gather.  Falling on their main town, he took it by surprise and stormed it, killing thirty warriors and capturing a large number of women and children.  Of these, however, he was able to bring in but twenty, who were especially valuable because they could be exchanged for white captives.  He burnt two other towns and three small villages, destroying much provision and capturing two hundred horses.  He himself had but one man killed and one wounded.  Before the startled warriors could gather to attack him he plunged once more into the wilderness, carrying his prisoners and plunder, and driving the captured horses before him; and so swift were his motions that he got back in safety to the settlements. The length of the journey, the absolutely untravelled nature of the country, which no white man, save perhaps an occasional wandering hunter, had ever before traversed, the extreme difficulty of the route over the wooded, cliff-scarred mountains, and the strength of the Cherokee towns that were to be attacked, all combined to render the feat most difficult.  For its successful performance there was need of courage, hardihood, woodcraft, good judgment, stealth, and great rapidity of motion.  It was one of the most brilliant exploits of the border war.

Even after his return Sevier was kept busy pursuing and defeating small bands of plundering savages.  In the early summer he made a quick inroad south of the French Broad.  At the head of over a hundred hard riders he fell suddenly on the camp of a war party, took a dozen scalps, and scattered the rest of the Indians in every direction.  A succession of these blows completely humbled the Cherokees, and they sued for peace; thanks to Sevier’s tactics, they had suffered more loss than they had inflicted, an almost unknown thing in these wars with the forest Indians.  In midsummer peace was made by a treaty at the Great Island of the Holston.

    End of the War with the British and Tories.

During the latter half of the year, when danger from the Indians had temporarily ceased, Sevier and Shelby led down bands of mounted riflemen to assist the American forces in the Carolinas and Georgia.  They took an honorable share under Marion in some skirmishes against the British and Hessians but they did not render any special service, and Greene found he could place no reliance on them for the actual stubborn campaigns that broke the strength of the king’s armies.  They enlisted for very short periods, and when their time was up promptly returned to their mountains, for they were sure to get home-sick and uneasy about their families; and neither the officers nor the soldiers had any proper idea of the value of obedience.  Among their own hills and forests and for their own work, they were literally unequalled; and they were ready enough to swoop down from their strongholds, strike some definite blow, or do some single piece of valiant fighting in the low country, and then fall back as quickly as they had come.  But they were not particularly suited for a pitched battle in the open, and were quite unfitted to carry on a long campaign.;

In one respect the mountain men deserve great credit for their conduct in the Carolinas.  As a general thing they held aloof from the plundering.  The frightful character of the civil war between the whigs and tories, and the excesses of the British armies, had utterly demoralized the southern States; they were cast into a condition of anarchic disorder, and the conflicts between the patriots and loyalists degenerated into a bloody scramble for murder and plunder wherein the whigs behaved as badly as ever the tories had done. [Footnote:  In the Clay MSS. there is a letter from Jesse Benton (the father of the great Missouri Senator) to Col.  Thos.  Hart, of March 23d, 1783, which gives a glimpse of the way in which the tories were treated even after the British had been driven out; it also shows how soon maltreatment of royalists was turned into general misrule and rioting.  The letter runs, in part, as follows: 

“I cannot help mentioning to You an Evil which seems intaild upon the upper part of this State, to wit, Mobbs and commotions amongst the People.  I shall give you the particulars of the last Work of this kind which lately happend, & which is not yet settled; Plunder being the first cause.  The Scoundrels, under the cloak of great Whigs cannot bear the thought of paying the unfortunate Wretches whom Fame and ill will call Tories (though many of them perhaps honest, industrious and useful men) for plunderd property; but on the other Hand think they together with their Wives and Children (who are now beging for Mercy) ought to be punished to the utmost extremity.  I am sorry that Col.  O Neal and his Brother Peter, who have been useful men and whom I am in hopes are pretty clear of plundering, should have a hand in Arbitrary measures at this Day when the Civil Laws might take place.

“One Jacob Graves son of old John of Stinking Quarter, went off & was taken with the British Army, escaped from the Guards, came & surrendered himself to Gen’l Butler, about the middle of Last month & went to his Family upon Parole.  Col.  O Neal being informed of this, armed himself with Gun and sword, went to Graves’s in a passion, Graves shut the Door, O Neal broke it down, Graves I believe thinking his own Life at stake, took his Brothers Gun which happened to be in the house & shot O Neal through the Breast.

“O Neal has suffered much but is now recovering.  This accident has inflamed and set to work those who were afraid of suffering for their unjust and unwarrantable Deeds, the Ignorant honest men are also willing to take part against their Rulers & I don’t know when nor where it is to end, but I wish it was over.  At the Guilford Feb’y Court Peter O Neal & others armed with clubs in the Face of the Court then sitting and in the Court house too, beat some men called Tories so much that their Lives were despaired of, broke up the Court and finally have stopd the civil Laws in that County.  Your old Friend Col.  Dunn got out at Window, fled in a Fright, took cold and died immediately.  Rowan County Court I am told was also broke up.

“If O Neal should die I fear that a number of the unhappy wretches called Tories will be Murdered, and that a man disposed to do justice dare not interfere, indeed the times seem to imitate the commencement of the Regulators.”] Men were shot, houses burned, horses stolen, and negroes kidnapped; even the unfortunate freedmen of color were hurried off and sold into slavery.  It was with the utmost difficulty that a few wise and good commanders, earnest lovers of their country, like the gallant General Pickens, were able to put a partial stop to these outrages, and gather a few brave men to help in overcoming the foreign foe.  To the honor of the troops under Sevier and Shelby be it said that they took little part in these misdeeds.  There were doubtless some men among them who shared in all the evil of that turbulent time; but most of these frontier riflemen, though poor and ignorant, were sincerely patriotic; they marched to fight the oppressor, to drive out the stranger, not to ill-treat their own friends and countrymen.

Towards the end of these campaigns, which marked the close of the Revolutionary struggle, Shelby was sent to the North Carolina Legislature, where he served for a couple of terms.  Then, when peace was formally declared, he removed to Kentucky, where he lived ever afterwards.  Sevier stayed in his home on the Nolichucky, to be thenceforth, while his life lasted, the leader in peace and war of his beloved mountaineers.

    Quarrels over the Land

Early in 1782 fresh difficulties arose with the Indians.  In the war just ended the Cherokees themselves had been chiefly to blame.  The whites were now in their turn the aggressors the trouble being, as usual, that they encroached on lands secured to the red men by solemn treaty.  The Watauga settlements had been kept compact by the presence of the neighboring Indians.  They had grown steadily but slowly.  They extended their domain slightly after every treaty, such treaty being usually though not always the sequel to a successful war; but they never gained any large stretch of territory at once.  Had it not been for the presence of the hostile tribes they would have scattered far and wide over the country, and could not have formed any government.

The preceding spring (1781) the land office had been closed, not to be opened until after peace with Great Britain was definitely declared, the utter demoralization of the government bringing the work to a standstill.  The rage for land speculation, however, which had continued, even in the stormiest days of the Revolution, grew tenfold in strength after Yorktown, when peace at no distant day was assured.  The wealthy land speculators of the seaboard counties made agreements of various sorts with the more prominent frontier leaders in the effort to secure large tracts of good country.  The system of surveying was much better than in Kentucky, but it was still by no means perfect, as each man placed his plot wherever he chose, first describing the boundary marks rather vaguely, and leaving an illiterate old hunter to run the lines.  Moreover, the intending settler frequently absented himself for several months, or was temporarily chased away by the Indians, while the official record books were most imperfect.  In consequence, many conflicts ensued.  The frontiersmen settled on any spot of good land they saw fit, and clung to it with defiant tenacity, whether or not it afterwards proved to be on a tract previously granted to some land company or rich private individual who had never been a hundred miles from the sea-coast.  Public officials went into these speculations.  Thus Major Joseph Martin, while an Indian agent, tried to speculate in Cherokee lands. Of course the officer’s public influence was speedily destroyed when he once undertook such operations; he could no longer do justice to outsiders.  Occasionally the falseness of his position made him unjust to the Indians; more often it forced him into league with the latter, and made him hostile to the borderers.

Before the end of the Revolution the trouble between the actual settlers and the land speculators became so great that a small subsidiary civil war was threatened.  The rough riflemen resolutely declined to leave their clearings, while the titular owners appealed to the authority of the loose land laws, and wished them to be backed up by the armed force of the State.

The government of North Carolina was far too weak to turn out the frontiersmen in favor of the speculators to whom the land had been granted, ­often by fraudulent means, or at least for a ridiculously small sum of money.  Still less could it prevent its unruly subjects from trespassing on the Indian country, or protect them if they were themselves threatened by the savages.  It could not do justice as between its own citizens, and it was quite incompetent to preserve the peace between them and outsiders. The borderers were left to work out their own salvation.

    Further Indian Troubles.

By the beginning of 1782 settlements were being made south of the French Broad.  This alarmed and irritated the Indians, and they sent repeated remonstrances to Major Martin, who was Indian agent, and also to the governor of North Carolina.  The latter wrote Sevier, directing him to drive off the intruding settlers, and pull down their cabins.  Sevier did not obey.  He took purely the frontier view of the question, and he had no intention of harassing his own staunch adherents for the sake of the savages whom he had so often fought.  Nevertheless, the Cherokees always liked him personally, for he was as open-handed and free-hearted to them as to every one else, and treated them to the best he had whenever they came to his house.  He had much justification for his refusal, too, in the fact that the Indians themselves were always committing outrages.  When the Americans reconquered the southern States many tories fled to the Cherokee towns, and incited the savages to hostility; and the outlying settlements of the borderers were being burned and plundered by members of the very tribes whose chiefs were at the same time writing to the governor to complain of the white encroachments.

When in April the Cherokees held a friendly talk with Evan Shelby they admitted that the tories among them and their own evil-disposed young men committed ravages on the whites, but asserted that most of them greatly desired peace, for they were weak and distressed, and had shrunk much in numbers. The trouble was that when they were so absolutely unable to control their own bad characters, it was inevitable that they should become embroiled with the whites.

The worst members of each race committed crimes against the other, and not only did the retaliation often fall on the innocent, but, unfortunately, even the good men were apt to make common cause with the criminals of their own color.  Thus in July the Chickamaugas sent in a talk for peace; but at that very time a band of their young braves made a foray into Powell’s valley, killing two settlers and driving off some stock.  They were pursued, one of their number killed, and most of the stock retaken.  In the same month, on the other hand, two friendly Indians, who had a canoe laden with peltry, were murdered on the Holston by a couple of white ruffians, who then attempted to sell the furs.  They were discovered, and the furs taken from them; but to their disgrace be it said, the people round about would not suffer the criminals to be brought to justice.

The mutual outrages continued throughout the summer, and in September they came to a head.  The great majority of the Otari of the Overhill towns were still desirous of peace, and after a council of their head-men the chief Old Tassel, of the town of Chota, sent on their behalf a strong appeal to the governors of both Virginia and North Carolina.  The document is written with such dignity, and yet in a tone of such curious pathos, that it is worth giving in full, as putting in strongest possible form the Indian side of the case, and as a sample of the best of these Indian “talks.”

“A Talk to Colonel Joseph Martin, by the Old Tassell, in Chota, the 25th of September, 1782, in favour of the whole nation.  For His Excellency, the Governor of North Carolina.  Present, all the chiefs of the friendly towns and a number of young men.

“Brother:  I am now going to speak to you.  I hope you will listen to me.  A string.  I intended to come this fall and see you, but there was such confusion in our country, I thought it best for me to stay at home and send my Talks by our friend Colonel Martin, who promised to deliver them safe to you.  We are a poor distressed people, that is in great trouble, and we hope our elder brother will take pity on us and do us justice.  Your people from Nolichucky are daily pushing us out of our lands.  We have no place to hunt on.  Your people have built houses within one day’s walk of our towns.  We don’t want to quarrel with our elder brother; we, therefore, hope our elder brother will not take our lands from us, that the Great Man above gave us.  He made you and he made us; we are all his children, and we hope our elder brother will take pity on us, and not take our lands from us that our father gave us, because he is stronger than we are.  We are the first people that ever lived on this land; it is ours, and why will our elder brother take it from us?  It is true, some time past, the people over the great water persuaded some of our young men to do some mischief to our elder brother, which our principal men were sorry for.  But you our elder brothers come to our towns and took satisfaction, and then sent for us to come and treat with you, which we did.  Then our elder brother promised to have the line run between us agreeable to the first treaty, and all that should be found over the line should be moved off.  But it is not done yet.  We have done nothing to offend our elder brother since the last treaty, and why should our elder brother want to quarrel with us?  We have sent to the Governor of Virginia on the same subject.  We hope that between you both, you will take pity on your younger brother, and send Col.  Sevier, who is a good man, to have all your people moved off our land.  I should say a great deal more, but our friend, Colonel Martin, knows all our grievances, and he can inform you.  A string.”

The speech is interesting because it shows that the Indians both liked and respected Sevier, their most redoubtable foe; and because it acknowledges that in the previous war the Cherokees themselves had been the wrongdoers.  Even Old Tassel had been implicated in the treacherous conduct of the chiefs at that period; but he generally acted very well, and belonged with the large number of his tribesmen who, for no fault of their own, were shamefully misused by the whites.

The white intruders were not removed.  No immediate collision followed on this account; but when Old Tassel’s talk was forwarded to the governor, small parties of Chickamaugas, assisted by young braves from among the Creeks and Erati, had already begun to commit ravages on the outlying settlements.  Two weeks before Old Tassel spoke, on the 11th of September, a family of whites was butchered on Moccasin Creek.  The neighbors gathered, pursued the Indians, and recaptured the survivors. Other outrages followed, throughout the month.  Sevier as usual came to the rescue of the angered settlers.  He gathered a couple of hundred mounted riflemen, and made one of his swift retaliatory inroads.  His men were simply volunteers, for there was no money in the country treasury with which to pay them or provide them with food and provisions; it was their own quarrel, and they furnished their own services free, each bringing his horse, rifle, ammunition, blanket, and wallet of parched corn.  Naturally such troops made war purely according to their own ideas, and cared nothing whatever for the commands of those governmental bodies who were theoretically their superiors.  They were poor men, staunch patriots, who had suffered much and done all they could during the Revolution; now, when threatened by the savages they were left to protect themselves, and they did it in their own way.  Sevier led his force down through the Overhill towns, doing their people no injury and holding a peace talk with them.  They gave him a half breed, John Watts, afterwards one of their chiefs, as guide; and he marched quickly against some of the Chickamauga towns, where he destroyed the cabins and provision hoards.  Afterwards he penetrated to the Coosa, where he burned one or two Creek villages.  The inhabitants fled from the towns before he could reach them; and his own motions were so rapid that they could never gather in force strong enough to assail him. Very few Indians were killed, and apparently none of Sevier’s people; a tory, an ex-British sergeant, then living with an Indian squaw, was among the slain.

This foray brought but a short relief to the settlements.  On Christmas day three men were killed on the Clinch; and it was so unusual a season for the war parties to be abroad that the attack caused widespread alarm. Early in the spring of 1783 the ravages began again. Some time before General Wayne had addressed the Creeks and Choctaws, reproaching them with the aid they had given the British, and threatening them with a bloody chastisement if they would not keep the peace. A threat from Mad Anthony meant something, and the Indians paid at least momentary heed.  Georgia enjoyed a short respite, which, as usual, the more reckless borderers strove to bring to an end by encroaching on the Indian lands, while the State authorities, on the other hand, did their best to stop not only such encroachments, but also all travelling and hunting in the Indian country, and especially the marking of trees.  This last operation, as Governor Lyman Hall remarked in his proclamation, gave “Great Offence to the Indians,” who thoroughly understood that the surveys indicated the approaching confiscation of their territory.

Towards the end of 1783 a definite peace was concluded with the Chickasaws, who ever afterwards remained friendly; but the Creeks, while amusing the Georgians by pretending to treat, let their parties of young braves find an outlet for their energies by assailing the Holston and Cumberland settlements. The North Carolina Legislature, becoming impatient, passed a law summarily appropriating certain lands that were claimed by the unfortunate Cherokees.  The troubled peace was continually threatened by the actions either of ungovernable frontiersmen or of bloodthirsty and vindictive Indians. Small parties of scouts were incessantly employed in patrolling the southern border.

    Growth of the Settlements.

Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the Indians was over.  The Holston settlements throve lustily.  Wagon roads were made, leading into both Virginia and North Carolina.  Settlers thronged into the country, the roads were well travelled, and the clearings became very numerous.  The villages began to feel safe without stockades, save those on the extreme border, which were still built in the usual frontier style.  The scattering log school-houses and meeting-houses increased steadily in numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to become the leading and typical creed of the west, first gained a foothold along the Holston, with a congregation of seventy-six members.

These people of the upper Tennessee valleys long continued one in interest as in blood.  Whether they lived north or south of the Virginia or North Carolina boundary, they were more closely united to one another than they were to the seaboard governments of which they formed part.  Their history is not generally studied as a whole, because one portion of their territory continued part of Virginia, while the remainder was cut off from North Carolina as the nucleus of a separate State.  But in the time of their importance, in the first formative period of the young west, all these Holston settlements must be treated together, or else their real place in our history will be totally misunderstood.

    Frontier Towns.

The two towns of Abingdon and Jonesboro, respectively north and south of the line, were the centres of activity.  In Jonesboro the log court-house, with its clapboard roof, was abandoned, and in its place a twenty-four-foot-square building of hewn logs was put up; it had a shingled roof and plank floors, and contained a justice’s bench, a lawyers’ and clerk’s bar, and a sheriff’s box to sit in.  The county of Washington was now further subdivided, its southwest portion being erected into the county of Greene, so that there were three counties of North Carolina west of the mountains.  The court of the new county consisted of several justices, who appointed their own clerk, sheriff, attorney for the State, entry-taker, surveyer, and registrar.  They appropriated money to pay for the use of the log-house where they held sessions, laid a tax of a shilling specie on every hundred pounds for the purpose of erecting public buildings, laid out roads, issued licenses to build mills, and bench warrants to take suspected persons.

Abingdon was a typical little frontier town of the class that immediately succeeded the stockaded hamlets.  A public square had been laid out, round which, and down the straggling main street, the few buildings were scattered; all were of logs, from the court house and small jail down.  There were three or four taverns.  The two best were respectively houses of entertainment for those who were fond of their brandy, and for the temperate.  There were a blacksmith shop and a couple of stores. The traders brought their goods from Alexandria, Baltimore, or even Philadelphia, and made a handsome profit.  The lower taverns were scenes of drunken frolic, often ending in free fights.  There was no constable, and the sheriff, when called to quell a disturbance, summoned as a posse those of the bystanders whom he deemed friendly to the cause of law and order.  There were many strangers passing through; and the better class of these were welcome at the rambling log-houses of the neighboring backwoods gentry, who often themselves rode into the taverns to learn from the travellers what was happening in the great world beyond the mountains.  Court-day was a great occasion; all the neighborhood flocked in to gossip, lounge, race horses, and fight.  Of course in such gatherings there were always certain privileged characters.  At Abingdon these were to be found in the persons of a hunter named Edward Callahan, and his wife Sukey.  As regularly as court-day came round they appeared, Sukey driving a cart laden with pies, cakes, and drinkables, while Edward, whose rolls of furs and deer hides were also in the cart, stalked at its tail on foot, in full hunter’s dress, with rifle, powder-horn, and bullet-bag, while his fine, well-taught hunting-dog followed at his heels.  Sukey would halt in the middle of the street, make an awning for herself and begin business, while Edward strolled off to see about selling his peltries.  Sukey never would take out a license, and so was often in trouble for selling liquor.  The judges were strict in proceeding against offenders ­and even stricter against the unfortunate tories ­but they had a humorous liking for Sukey, which was shared by the various grand juries.  By means of some excuse or other she was always let off, and in return showed great gratitude to such of her benefactors as came near her mountain cabin.

Court-day was apt to close with much hard drinking; for the backwoodsmen of every degree dearly loved whiskey.