TENNESSEE BECOMES A STATE, 1791-1796.
The Southwestern Territory.
"The Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio"
was the official title of the tract of land which had been ceded by
North Carolina to the United States, and which a few years later became
the State of Tennessee. William Blount, the newly appointed Governor,
took charge late in 1790. He made a tour of the various counties, as
laid out under authority of the State of North Carolina, rechristening
them as counties of the Territory, and summoning before him the persons
in each county holding commissions from North Carolina, at the
respective court-houses, where he formally notified them of the change.
He read to them the act of Congress accepting the cessions of the claims
of North Carolina; then he read his own commission from President
Washington; and informed them of the provision by North Carolina that
Congress should assume and execute the government of the new Territory
"in a manner similar to that which they support northwest of the River
Ohio." Following this he formally read the ordinance for the government
of the Northwestern Territory. He commented upon and explained this
proclamation, stating that under it the President had appointed the
Governor, the Judges, and the Secretary of the new Territory, and that
he himself, as Governor, would now appoint the necessary county
officers.
Blount Inaugurated as Governor.
Slavery in the New Territory.
The remarkable feature of this address was that he read to the assembled
officers in each county, as part of the law apparently binding upon
them, Article 6 of the Ordinance of 1787, which provided that there
should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the Northwestern
Territory. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Journal of Proceedings of William
Blount, Esq., Governor in and over the Territory of the United States of
America South of the River Ohio, in his executive department, October
23, 1790.] It had been expressly stipulated that this particular
provision as regards slavery should not apply to the Southwestern
Territory, and of course Blount's omission to mention this fact did not
in any way alter the case; but it is a singular thing that he should
without comment have read, and his listeners without comment have heard,
a recital that slavery was abolished in their territory. It emphasizes
the fact that at this time there was throughout the West no very strong
feeling on the subject of slavery, and what feeling there was, was if
anything hostile. The adventurous backwoods farmers who composed the
great mass of the population in Tennessee, as elsewhere among and west
of the Alleghanies, were not a slave-owning people, in the sense that
the planters of the seaboard were. They were preeminently folk who did
their work with their own hands. Master and man chopped and ploughed and
reaped and builded side by side, and even the leaders of the community,
the militia generals, the legislators, and the judges, often did their
share of farm work, and prided themselves upon their capacity to do it
well. They had none of that feeling which makes slave-owners look upon
manual labor as a badge of servitude. They were often lazy and
shiftless, but they never deified laziness and shiftlessness or made
them into a cult. The one thing they prized beyond all others was their
personal freedom, the right of the individual to do whatsoever he saw
fit. Indeed they often carried this feeling so far as to make them
condone gross excesses, rather than insist upon the exercise of even
needful authority. They were by no means entirely logical, but they did
see and feel that slavery was abhorrent, and that it was utterly
inconsistent with the theories of their own social and governmental
life. As yet there was no thought of treating slavery as a sacred
institution, the righteousness of which must not be questioned. At the
Fourth of July celebrations toasts such as "The total abolition of
slavery" were not uncommon. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, July 17,
1795, etc. See also issue Jan. 28, 1792.] It was this feeling which
prevented any manifestation of surprise at Blount's apparent
acquiescence in a section of the ordinance for the government of the
Territory which prohibited slavery.
Dulness of the Public Conscience about Slavery.
Nevertheless, though slaves were not numerous, they were far from
uncommon, and the moral conscience of the community was not really
roused upon the subject. It was hardly possible that it should be
roused, for no civilized people who owned African slaves had as yet
abolished slavery, and it was too much to hope that the path toward
abolition would be pointed out by poor frontiersmen engaged in a life
and death struggle with hostile savages. The slaveholders were not
interfered with until they gradually grew numerous enough and powerful
enough to set the tone of thought, and make it impossible to root out
slavery save by outside action.
Blount's First Appointments.
Blount recommended the appointment of Sevier and Robertson as
brigadier-generals of militia of the Eastern and Western districts of
the Territory, and issued a large number of commissions to the justices
of the peace, militia officers, sheriffs, and clerks of the county
courts in the different counties. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Journal of the
Proceedings, etc.] In his appointments he shrewdly and properly
identified himself with the natural leaders of the frontiersmen. He made
Sevier and Robertson his right-hand men, and strove always to act in
harmony with them, while for the minor military and civil officers he
chose the persons whom the frontiersmen themselves desired. In
consequence he speedily became a man of great influence for good. The
Secretary of the Territory reported to the Federal Government that the
effect of Blount's character on the frontiersmen was far greater than
was the case with any other man, and that he was able to get them to
adhere to the principles of order and to support the laws by his
influence in a way which it was hopeless to expect from their own
respect for governmental authority. Blount was felt by the frontiersmen
to be thoroughly in sympathy with them, to understand and appreciate
them, and to be heartily anxious for their welfare; and yet at the same
time his influence could be counted upon on the side of order, while the
majority of the frontier officials in any time of commotion were apt to
remain silent and inactive, or even to express their sympathy with the
disorderly element. [Footnote: American State Papers, iv.; Daniel Smith
to the Secretary of War, Knoxville, July 19, 1793.]
Blount's Tact in Dealing with Difficulties.
No one but a man of great tact and firmness could have preserved as much
order among the frontiersmen as Blount preserved. He was always under
fire from both sides. The settlers were continually complaining that
they were deserted by the Federal authorities, who favored the Indians,
and that Blount himself did not take sufficiently active steps to subdue
the savages; while on the other hand the National Administration was
continually upbraiding him for being too active against the Indians, and
for not keeping the frontiersmen sufficiently peaceable. Under much
temptations, and in a situation that would have bewildered any one,
Blount steadfastly followed his course of, on the one hand, striving his
best to protect the people over whom he was placed as governor, and to
repel the savages, while, on the other hand, he suppressed so far as lay
in his power, any outbreak against the authorities, and tried to
inculcate a feeling of loyalty and respect for the National Government.
[Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Feb. 13, 1793.] He did
much in creating a strong feeling of attachment to the Union among the
rough backwoodsmen with whom he had thrown in his lot.
Treaty of Holston with the Cherokees.
Early in 1791 Blount entered into negotiations with the Cherokees, and
when the weather grew warm, he summoned them to a treaty. They met on
the Holston, all of the noted Cherokee chiefs and hundreds of their
warriors being present, and concluded the treaty of Holston, by which,
in consideration of numerous gifts and of an annuity of a thousand
(afterwards increased to fifteen hundred) dollars, the Cherokees at last
definitely abandoned their disputed claims to the various tracts of land
which the whites claimed under various former treaties. By this treaty
with the Cherokees, and by the treaty with the Creeks entered into at
New York the previous summer, the Indian title to most of the present
State of Tennessee, was fairly and legally extinguished. However the
westernmost part, was still held by the Chickasaws, and certain tracts
in the southeast, by the Cherokees; while the Indian hunting grounds in
the middle of the territory were thrust in between the groups of
settlements on the Cumberland and the Holston.
Knoxville Founded.
The "Knoxville Gazette."
On the ground where the treaty was held Blount proceeded to build a
little town, which he made the capital of the Territory, and christened
Knoxville, in honor of Washington's Secretary of War. At this town there
was started, in 1791, under his own supervision, the first newspaper of
Tennessee, known as the _Knoxville Gazette_. It was four or five years
younger than the only other newspaper of the then far West, the
_Kentucky Gazette_. The paper gives an interesting glimpse of many of
the social and political conditions of the day. In political tone it
showed Blount's influence very strongly, and was markedly in advance of
most of the similar papers of the time, including the _Kentucky
Gazette_; for it took a firm stand in favor of the National Government,
and against every form of disorder, of separatism, or of mob law. As
with all of the American papers of the day, even in the backwoods, there
was much interest taken in European news, and a prominent position was
given to long letters, or extracts from seaboard papers, containing
accounts of the operations of the English fleets and the French armies,
or of the attitude of the European governments. Like most Americans, the
editorial writers of the paper originally sympathized strongly with the
French Revolution; but the news of the beheading of Marie Antoinette,
and the recital of the atrocities committed in Paris, worked a reaction
among those who loved order, and the _Knoxville Gazette_ ranged itself
with them, taking for the time being strong grounds against the French,
and even incidentally alluding to the Indians as being more
blood-thirsty than any man "not a Jacobin." [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazette_, March 27, 1794.] The people largely shared these sentiments.
In 1793 at the Fourth of July celebration at Jonesborough there was a
public dinner and ball, as there was also at Knoxville; Federal troops
were paraded and toasts were drunk to the President, to the Judges of
the Supreme Court, to Blount, to General Wayne, to the friendly
Chickasaw Indians, to Sevier, to the ladies of the Southwestern
Territory, to the American arms, and, finally, "to the true liberties of
France and a speedy and just punishment of the murderers of Louis XVI."
The word "Jacobin" was used as a term of reproach for some time.
The "Gazette" Sound in its Politics.
The paper was at first decidedly Federalist in sentiment. No sympathy
was expressed with Genet or with the efforts undertaken by the Western
allies of the French Minister to organize a force for the conquest of
Louisiana; and the Tennessee settlers generally took the side of law and
order in the earlier disturbances in which the Federal Government was
concerned. At the Fourth of July celebration in Knoxville, in 1795, one
of the toasts was "The four western counties of Pennsylvania; may they
repent their folly and sin no more"; the Tennesseeans sympathizing as
little with the Pennsylvania whiskey revolutionists as four years later
they sympathized with the Kentuckians and Virginians in their
nullification agitation against the alien and sedition laws.
Its Gradual Change of Tone.
Gradually, however, the tone of the paper changed, as did the tone of
the community, at least to the extent of becoming Democratic and
anti-Federal; for the people felt that the Easterners did not sympathize
with them either in their contests with the Indians or in their desire
to control the Mississippi and the farther West. They grew to regard
with particular vindictiveness the Federalists,--the aristocrats, as
they styled them,--of the Southern seaboard States, notably of Virginia
and South Carolina.
One pathetic feature of the paper was the recurrence of advertisements
by persons whose friends and kinsfolk had been carried off by the
Indians, and who anxiously sought any trace of them.
Queer Use of the "Gazette."
But the _Gazette_ was used for the expression of opinions not only by
the whites, but occasionally even by an Indian. One of the Cherokee
chiefs, the Red Bird, put into the _Gazette_, for two buckskins, a talk
to the Cherokee chief of the Upper Towns, in which he especially warned
him to leave alone one William Cocke, "the white man who lived among the
mulberry trees," for, said Red Bird, "the mulberry man talks very strong
and runs very fast"; this same Cocke being afterwards one of the first
two senators from Tennessee. The Red Bird ended his letter by the
expression of the rather quaint wish, "that all the bad people on both
sides were laid in the ground, for then there would not be so many mush
men trying to make people to believe they were warriors." [Footnote:
_Knoxville Gazette_, November 3, 1792.]
Efforts to Promote Higher Education.
Blount brought his family to Tennessee at once, and took the lead in
trying to build up institutions for higher education. After a good deal
of difficulty an academy was organized under the title of Blount
College, and was opened as soon as a sufficient number of pupils could
be gotten together; there were already two other colleges in the
Territory, Greeneville and Washington, the latter being the academy
founded by Doak. Like almost all other institutions of learning of the
day these three were under clerical control; but Blount College was
chartered as a non-denomination institution, the first of its kind in
the United States. [Footnote: See Edward T. Sanford's "Blount College
and the University of Tennessee," p. 13.] The clergyman and the lawyer,
with the school-master, were still the typical men of letters in all the
frontier communities. The doctor was not yet a prominent feature of life
in the backwoods, though there is in the _Gazette_ an advertisement of
one who announces that he intends to come to practise "with a large
stock of genuine medicines." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 19,
1794.]
Books of the Backwoods.
The ordinary books were still school books, books of law, and sermons or
theological writings. The first books, or pamphlets, published in
Eastern Tennessee were brought out about this time at the _Gazette_
office, and bore such titles as "A Sermon on Psalmody, by Rev. Hezekiah
Balch"; "A Discourse by the Rev. Samuel Carrick"; and a legal essay
called "Western Justice." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, Jan. 30 and
May 8, 1794.] There was also a slight effort now and then at literature
of a lighter kind. The little Western papers, like those in the East,
had their poets' corners, often with the heading of "Sacred to the
Muses," the poems ranging from "Lines to Myra" and "An Epitaph on John
Topham" to "The Pernicious Consequences of Smoking Cigars." In one of
the issues of the _Knoxville Gazette_ there is advertised for sale a new
song by "a gentleman of Col. McPherson's Blues, on a late Expedition
against the Pennsylvania Insurgents"; and also, in rather incongruous
juxtaposition, "Toplady's Translation of Zanchi on Predestination."
Settlers Throng into Tennessee.
Settlers were thronging into East Tennessee, and many penetrated even to
the Indian-harassed western district. In travelling to the western parts
the immigrants generally banded together in large parties, led by some
man of note. Among those who arrived in 1792 was the old North Carolina
Indian fighter, General Griffith Rutherford. He wished to settle on the
Cumberland, and to take thither all his company, with a large number of
wagons, and he sent to Blount begging that a road might be cut through
the wilderness for the wagons; or, if this could not be done, that some
man would blaze the route, "in which case," said he "there would be
hands of our own that could cut as fast as wagons could march."
[Footnote: Blount MSS., Rutherford to Blount, May 25, 1792.]
Meeting of the Territorial Legislature.
In 1794, there being five thousand free male inhabitants, as provided by
law, Tennessee became entitled to a Territorial legislature, and the
Governor summoned the Assembly to the meet at Knoxville on August 17th.
So great was the danger from the Indians that a military company had to
accompany the Cumberland legislators to and from the seat of government.
For the same reason the judges on their circuits had to go accompanied
by a military guard.
Among the first acts of this Territorial Legislature was that to
establish higher institutions of learning; John Sevier was made a
trustee in both Blount and Greeneville Colleges. A lottery was
established for the purpose of building the Cumberland road to
Nashville, and another one to build a jail and stocks in Nashville. A
pension act was passed for disabled soldiers and for widows and orphans,
who were to be given an adequate allowance at the discretion of the
county court. A poll tax of twenty-five cents on all taxable white polls
was laid, and on every taxable negro poll fifty cents. Land was taxed at
the rate of twenty-five cents a hundred acres, town lots one dollar;
while a stud horse was taxed four dollars. Thus, taxes were laid
exclusively upon free males, upon slaves, lands, town lots, and stud
horses, a rather queer combination. [Footnote: Laws of Tennessee,
Knoxville, 1803. First Session of Territorial Legislature, 1794.]
Many Industries Established.
Various industries were started, as the people began to demand not only
the necessaries of life but the comforts, and even occasionally the
luxuries. There were plenty of blacksmith shops; and a goldsmith and
jeweller set up his establishment. In his advertisement he shows that he
was prepared to do some work which would be alien to his modern
representative, for he notifies the citizens that he makes "rifle guns
in the neatest and most approved fashion." [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazelle_, Oct. 20, 1792.]
Ferries and Taverns.
Ferries were established at the important crossings, and taverns in the
county-seats and small towns. One of the Knoxville taverns advertises
its rates, which were one shilling for breakfast, one shilling for
supper, and one and sixpence for dinner; board and lodging for a week
costing two dollars, and board only for the same space and of time nine
shillings. Ferriage was three pence for a man and horse and two
shillings for a wagon and team.
Trade.
Various stores were established in the towns, the merchants obtaining
most of their goods in the great trade centres of Philadelphia and
Baltimore, and thence hauling them by wagon to the frontier. Most of the
trade was carried on by barter. There was very little coin in the
country and but few bank-notes. Often the advertisement specified the
kind of goods that would be taken and the different values at which they
would be received. Thus, the salt works at Washington, Virginia, in
advertising their salt, stated that they would sell it per bushel for
seven shillings and sixpence if paid in cash or prime furs; at ten
shillings if paid in bear or deer skins, beeswax, hemp, bacon, butter,
or beef cattle; and at twelve shillings if in other trade and country
produce, as was usual. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 1, 1793.]
Currency.
The prime furs were mink, coon, muskrat, wildcat, and beaver. Besides
this the stores advertised that they would take for their articles cash,
beeswax, and country produce or tallow, hogs' lard in white walnut kegs,
butter, pork, new feathers, good horses, and also corn, rye, oats, flax,
and "old Congress money," the old Congress money being that issued by
the Continental Congress, which had depreciated wonderfully in value.
They also took certificates of indebtedness either from the State or the
nation because of services performed against the Indians, and
certificates of land claimed under various rights. The value of some of
these commodities was evidently mainly speculative. The storekeepers
often felt that where they had to accept such dubious substitutes for
cash they desired to give no credit, and some of the advertisements run:
"Cheap, ready money store, where no credit whatever will be given," and
then proceed to describe what ready money was,--cash, furs, bacon, etc.
The stores sold salt, iron-mongery, pewterware, corduroys, rum, brandy,
whiskey, wine, ribbons, linen, calamancos, and in fact generally what
would be found at that day in any store in the smaller towns of the
older States. The best eight by ten crown-glass "was regularly
imported," and also "beautiful assortments of fashionable coat and vest
buttons," as well as "brown and loaf sugar, coffee, chocolate, tea, and
spices." In the towns the families had ceased to kill their own meat,
and beef markets were established where fresh meat could be had twice a
week.
Stock on the Range.
Houses and lots were advertised for sale, and one result of the method
of allowing the branded stock to range at large in the woods was that
the Range, there were numerous advertisements for strayed horses, and
even cattle, with descriptions of the brands and ear marks. The people
were already beginning to pay attention to the breeding of their horses,
and fine stallions with pedigrees were advertised, though some of the
advertisements show a certain indifference to purity of strain; one
stallion being quoted as of "mixed fox-hunting and dray" breed. Rather
curiously the Chickasaw horses were continually mentioned as of special
merit, together with those of imported stock. Attention was paid both to
pacers and trotters.
The lottery was still a recognized method of raising money for every
purpose, including the advancement of education and religion. One of the
advertisements gives as one of the prizes a negro, valued at one hundred
and thirty pounds, a horse at ten pounds, and five hundred acres of fine
land without improvements at twelve hundred pounds.
Government Escort for Immigrants.
Journeying to the long-settled districts of the East, persons went as
they wished, in their own wagons or on their own horses; but to go from
East Tennessee either to Kentucky, or to the Cumberland district, or to
New Orleans, was a serious matter because of the Indians. The
Territorial authorities provided annually an escort for immigrants from
the Holston country to the Cumberland, a distance of one hundred and ten
miles through the wilderness, and the departure of this annual escort
was advertised for weeks in advance.
Sometimes the escort was thus provided by the authorities. More often
adventurers simply banded together; or else some enterprising man
advertised that on a given date he should start and would provide
protection for those who chose to accompany him. Thus, in the _Knoxville
Gazette_ for February 6, 1795, a boat captain gives public notice to all
persons who wish to sail from the Holston country to New Orleans, that
on March 1st, if the waters answer, his two boats will start, the _Mary_
of twenty-five tons, and the _Little Polly_ of fifteen tons. Those who
had contracted for freight and passage are desired to attend previous to
that period.
Lawlessness.
There was of course a good deal of lawlessness and a strong tendency to
settle assault and battery cases in particular out of court. The
officers of justice at times had to subdue criminals by open force.
Andrew Jackson, who was District Attorney for the Western District,
early acquired fame by the energy and success with which he put down any
criminal who resisted the law. The worst offenders fled to the
Mississippi Territory, there to live among Spaniards, Creoles, Indians,
and lawless Americans. Lawyers drove a thriving business; but they had
their own difficulties, to judge by one advertisement, which appears in
the issue of the _Gazette_ for March 23, 1793, where six of them give
notice that thereafter they will give no legal advice unless it is
legally paid for.
Endless Land Speculations.
All the settlers, or at least all the settlers who had any ambition to
rise in the world, were absorbed in land speculations: Blount,
Robertson, and the other leaders as much so as anybody. They were
continually in correspondence with one another about the purchase of
land warrants, and about laying them out in the best localities. Of
course there was much jealousy and rivalry in the effort to get the best
sites. Robertson, being farthest on the frontier, where there was most
wild land, had peculiar advantages. Very soon after he settled in the
Cumberland district at the close of the Revolutionary War, Blount had
entered into an agreement with him for a joint land speculation. Blount
was to purchase land claims from both officers and soldiers amounting in
all to fifty thousand acres and enter them for the Western Territory,
while Robertson was to survey and locate the claims, receiving one
fourth of the whole for his reward. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Agreement
between William Blount and James Robertson, Oct. 30, 1783.] Their
connection continued during Blount's term as Governor, and Blount's
letters to Robertson contain much advice as to how the warrants shall be
laid out. Wherever possible they were of course laid outside the Indian
boundaries; but, like every one else, Blount and Robertson knew that
eventually the Indian lands would come into the possession of the United
States, and in view of the utter confusion of the titles, and especially
in view of the way the Indians as well as the whites continually broke
the treaties and rendered it necessary to make new ones, both Blount and
Robertson were willing to place claims on the Indian lands and trust to
luck to make the claims good if ever a cession was made. The lands thus
located were not lands upon which any Indian village stood. Generally
they were tracts of wilderness through which the Indians occasionally
hunted, but as to which there was a question whether they had yet been
formally ceded to the government. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to
Robertson, April 29, 1792.]
Land Tax and Land Sales.
Blount also corresponded with many other men on the question of these
land speculations, and it is amusing to read the expressions of horror
of his correspondents when they read that Tennessee had imposed a land
tax. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Lexington, Ky.,
March 29, 1795.] By his activity he became a very large landed
proprietor, and when Tennessee was made a State he was taxed on 73,252
acres in all. The tax was not excessive, being but $179.72. [Footnote:
_Do_., Return of taxable property of Blount, Nashville, Sept. 9, 1796.]
It was of course entirely proper for Blount to get possession of the
land in this way. The theory of government on the frontier was that each
man should be paid a small salary, and be allowed to exercise his
private business just so long as it did not interfere with his public
duties. Blount's land speculations were similar to those in which almost
every other prominent American, in public or private life, was engaged.
Neither Congress nor the States had as yet seen the wisdom of allowing
the laud to be sold only in small parcels to actual occupants, and the
favorite kind of speculation was the organization of land companies. Of
course there were other kinds of business in which prominent men took
part. Sevier was interested not only in land, but in various mercantile
ventures of a more or less speculative kind; he acted as an intermediary
with the big importers, who were willing to furnish some of the stores
with six months' credit if they could be guaranteed a settlement at the
end of that time. [Footnote: _Do_., David Allison to Blount, Oct. 16,
1791.]
Business Versatility of the Frontiersman
One of the characteristics of all the leading frontiersmen was not only
the way in which they combined business enterprises with their work as
Government officials and as Indian fighters, but the readiness with
which they turned from one business enterprise to another. One of
Blount's Kentucky correspondents, Thomas Hart, the grandfather of
Benton, in his letter to Blount shows these traits in typical fashion.
He was engaged in various land speculations with Blount, [Footnote: Clay
MSS., Blount to Hart, Knoxville, February 9, 1794. This was just as Hart
was moving to Kentucky.] and was always writing to him about locating
land warrants, advertising the same as required by law, and the like. He
and Blount held some tens of thousands of acres of the Henderson claim,
and Hart proposed that they should lay it out in five-hundred-acre
tracts, to be rented to farmers, with the idea that each farmer should
receive ten cows and calves to start with; a proposition which was of
course hopeless, as the pioneers would not lease lands when it was so
easy to obtain freeholds. In his letters, Hart mentioned cheerfully that
though he was sixty-three years old he was just as well able to carry on
his manufacturing business, and, on occasion, to leave it, and play
pioneer, as he ever had been, remarking that he "never would be
satisfied in the world while new countries could be found," and that his
intention, now that he had moved to Kentucky, was to push the mercantile
business as long as the Indian war continued and money was plenty, and
when that failed, to turn his attention to farming and to divide up
those of his lands he could not till himself, to be rented by others.
[Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Dec. 23, 1793.]
This letter to Blount shows, by the way, as was shown by Madison's
correspondent from Kentucky, that the Indian war, scourge though it was
to the frontiersmen as a whole, brought some attendant benefits in its
wake by putting a stimulus on the trade of the merchants and bringing
ready money into the country. It must not be forgotten, however, that
men like Hart and Blount, though in some ways they were benefited by the
war, were in other ways very much injured, and that, moreover, they
consistently strove to do justice to the Indians and to put a stop to
hostilities.
In his letters Colonel Hart betrays a hearty, healthy love of life, and
capacity to enjoy it, and make the best of it, which fortunately exist
in many Kentucky and Tennessee families to this day. He wanted money,
but the reason he wanted it was to use it in having a good time for
himself and his friends, writing: "I feel all the ardor and spirit for
business I did forty years ago, and see myself more capable to conduct
it. Oh, if my old friend Uncle Jacob was but living and in this country,
what pleasure we should have in raking up money and spending it with our
friends!" and he closed by earnestly entreating Blount and his family to
come to Kentucky, which he assured him was the finest country in the
world, with moreover, "a very pleasant society, for," said he, "I can
say with truth that the society of this place is equal, if not superior,
to any that can be found in any inland town in the United States, for
there is not a day that passes over our heads but I can have half a
dozen strange gentlemen to dine with us, and they are from all parts of
the Union." [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hart to Blount, Lexington, Feb. 15,
1795.]
The Neverending Indian Warfare.
Incessant Violation of the Treaties by Both the Red Men and the White.
The one overshadowing fact in the history of Tennessee during Blount's
term as governor was the Indian warfare. Hostilities with the Indians
were never ceasing, and, so far as Tennessee was concerned, during these
six years it was the Indians, and not the whites who were habitually the
aggressors and wrongdoers. The Indian warfare in the Territory during
these years deserves some study because it was typical of what occurred
elsewhere. It illustrates forcibly the fact that under the actual
conditions of settlement wars were inevitable; for if it is admitted
that the land of the Indians had to be taken and that the continent had
to be settled by white men, it must be further admitted that the
settlement could not have taken place save after war. The whites might
be to blame in some cases, and the Indians in others; but under no
combination of circumstances was it possible to obtain possession of the
country save as the result of war, or of a peace obtained by the fear of
war. Any peace which did not surrender the land was sure in the end to
be broken by the whites; and a peace which did surrender the land would
be broken by the Indians. The history of Tennessee during the dozen years
from 1785 to 1796 offers an admirable case in point. In 1785 the United
States Commissioners concluded the treaty of Hopewell with the Indians,
and solemnly guaranteed them certain lands. The whites contemptuously
disregarded this treaty and seized the lands which it guaranteed to
the Indians, being themselves the aggressors, and paying no heed to
the plighted word of the Government, while the Government itself was
too weak to make the frontiersmen keep faith. The treaties of New York
and of Holston with the Creeks and Cherokees in 1790 and 1791 were
fairly entered into by fully authorized representatives of the tribes.
Under them, for a valuable consideration, and of their own motion, the
Creeks and Cherokees solemnly surrendered all title to what is now the
territory of Tennessee, save to a few tracts mostly in the west and
southeast; and much of the land which was thus ceded they had ceded
before. Nevertheless, the peace thus solemnly made was immediately
violated by the Indians themselves. The whites were not the aggressors
in any way, and, on the contrary, thanks to the wish of the United
States authorities for peace, and to the care with which Blount strove
to carry out the will of the Federal Government, they for a long time
refrained even from retaliating when injured; yet the Indians robbed and
plundered them even more freely than when the whites themselves had been
the aggressors and had broken the treaty.
Confusion of the Treaties.
Before making the treaty of Holston Blount had been in correspondence
with Benjamin Hawkins, a man who had always been greatly interested in
Indian affairs. He was a prominent politician in North Carolina, and
afterwards for many years agent among the Southern Indians. He had been
concerned in several of the treaties. He warned Blount that since the
treaty of Hopewell the whites, and not the Indians, had been the
aggressors; and also warned him not to try to get too much land from the
Indians, or to take away too great an extent of their hunting grounds,
which would only help the great land companies, but to be content with
the thirty-fifth parallel for a southern boundary. [Footnote: Blount
MSS., Hawkins to Blount, March 10, 1791.] Blount paid much heed to this
advice, and by the treaty of Holston he obtained from the Indians little
more than what the tribes had previously granted; except that they
confirmed to the whites the country upon which the pioneers were already
settled. The Cumberland district had already been granted over and over
again by the Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the North
Carolinians and to the United States. The Creeks in particular never had
had any claim to this Cumberland country, which was a hundred miles and
over from any of their towns. All the use they had ever made of it was
to visit it with their hunting parties, as did the Cherokees, Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Shawnees, Delawares, and many others. Yet the Creeks and
other Indians had the effrontery afterwards to assert that the
Cumberland Country had never been ceded at all, and that as the settlers
in it were thus outside of the territory properly belonging to the
United States, they were not entitled to protection under the treaty
entered into with the latter.
Blount's Good Faith with the Indians.
Blount was vigilant and active in seeing that none of the frontiersmen
trespassed on the Indian lands, and when a party of men, claiming
authority under Georgia, started to settle at the Muscle Shoals, he
co-operated actively with the Indians in having them brought back, and
did his best, though in vain, to persuade the Grand Jury to indict the
offenders. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 3,
1791.] He was explicit in his orders to Sevier, to Robertson, and to
District Attorney Jackson that they should promptly punish any white man
who violated the provisions of the treaty; and over a year after it had
been entered into he was able to write in explicit terms that "not a
single settler had built a house, or made a settlement of any kind, on
the Cherokee lands, and that no Indians had been killed by the whites
excepting in defence of their lives and property." [Footnote: _Do_.,
Blount to Robertson, Jan. 2, 1792; to Bloody Fellow, Sept. 13, 1792.]
Robertson heartily co-operated with Blount, as did Sevier, in the effort
to keep peace, Robertson showing much good sense and self-control, and
acquiescing in Blount's desire that nothing should be done "inconsistent
with the good of the nation as a whole," and that "the faith of the
nation should be kept." [Footnote: Blount MSS., Robertson to Blount,
Jan. 17, 1793.]
Bad Faith of the Indians.
The Indians as a body showed no appreciation whatever of these efforts
to keep the peace, and plundered and murdered quite as freely as before
the treaties, or as when the whites themselves were the aggressors. The
Creek Confederacy was in a condition of utter disorganization,
McGillivray's authority was repudiated, and most of the towns scornfully
refused to obey the treaty into which their representatives had entered
at New York. A tory adventurer named Bowles, who claimed to have the
backing of the English Government, landed in the nation and set himself
in opposition to McGillivray. The latter, who was no fighter, and whose
tools were treachery and craft, fled to the protection of the Spaniards.
Bowles, among other feats, plundered the stores of Panton, a white
trader in the Spanish interest, and for a moment his authority seemed
supreme; but the Spaniards, by a trick, got possession of him and put
him in prison.
Intrigues of the Spaniards.
The Spaniards still claimed as their own the Southwestern country, and
were untiring in their efforts to keep the Indians united among
themselves and hostile to the Americans. They concluded a formal treaty
of friendship and of reciprocal guarantee with the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
Creeks, and Cherokees at Nogales, in the Choctaw country, on May 14,
1792. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Documents; Letter of Carondelet to
Duke of Alcudia, Nov. 24, 1794.] The Indians entered into this treaty at
the very time they had concluded wholly inconsistent treaties with the
Americans. On the place of the treaty the Spaniards built a fort, which
they named Fort Confederation, to perpetuate, as they hoped, the memory
of the confederation they had thus established among the Southern
Indians. By means of this fort they intended to control all the
territory enclosed between the rivers Mississippi, Yazoo, Chickasaw, and
Mobile. The Spaniards also expended large sums of money in arming the
Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were quite willing to do of
their own accord,--that is, to prevent the demarkation of the boundary
line as provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which Carondelet
reported to his Court as "insulting and pernicious to Spain, the
abrogation of which has lately been brought about by the intrigues with
the Indians." [Footnote: Draper MSS., Letter of Carondelet, New Orleans,
Sept. 25, 1795.]
Carondelet's Policy.
At the same time that the bill for these expenses was submitted for
audit to the home government the Spanish Governor also submitted his
accounts for the expenses in organizing the expedition against the
"English adventurer Bowles," and in negotiating with Wilkinson and the
other Kentucky Separatists, and also in establishing a Spanish post at
the Chickasaw Bluffs, for which he had finally obtained the permission
of the Chickasaws. The Americans of course regarded the establishment
both of the fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs and the fort at Nogales as
direct challenges; and Carondelet's accounts show that the frontiersmen
were entirely justified in their belief that the Spaniards not only
supplied the Creeks with arms and munitions of war, but actively
interfered to prevent them from keeping faith and carrying out the
treaties which they had signed. The Spaniards did not wish the Indians
to go to war unless it was necessary as a last resort. They preferred
that they should be peaceful, provided always they could prevent the
intrusion of the Americans. Carondelet wrote: "We have inspired the
Creeks with pacific intentions towards the United States, but with the
precise restriction that there shall be no change of the boundaries,"
[Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Docs.; Carondelet's Report, Oct. 23,
1793.] and he added that "to sustain our allied nations [of Indians] in
the possession of their lands becomes therefore indispensable, both to
preserve Louisiana to Spain, and in order to keep the Americans from the
navigation of the Gulf." He expressed great uneasiness at the efforts of
Robertson to foment war between the Chickasaws and Choctaws and the
Creeks, and exerted all his powers to keep the Indian nations at peace
with one another and united against the settler-folk. [Footnote: _Do_.,
Carondelet to Don Louis De Las Casas, June 13, 1795, enclosing letter
from Don M. G. De Lemos, Governor of Natchez.]
The Spaniards far more Treacherous than the British.
The Spaniards, though with far more infamous and deliberate deceit and
far grosser treachery, were pursuing towards the United States and the
Southwestern Indians the policy pursued by the British towards the
United States and the Northwestern Indians; with the difference that the
Spanish Governor and his agents acted under the orders of the Court of
Spain, while the English authorities connived at and profited by, rather
than directly commanded, what was done by their subordinates. Carondelet
expressly states that Colonel Gayoso and his other subordinates had been
directed to unite the Indian nations in a defensive alliance, under the
protection of Spain, with the object of opposing Blount, Robertson, and
the frontiersmen, and of establishing the Cumberland River as the
boundary between the Americans and the Indians. The reciprocal guarantee
of their lands by the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws was,
said Carondelet, the only way by which the Americans could be retained
within their own boundaries. [Footnote: Carondelet to Alcudia, Aug. 17,
1793.] The Spaniards devoted much attention to supporting those traders
among the Indians who were faithful to the cause of Spain and could be
relied upon to intrigue against the Americans. [Footnote: _Do_., Manuel
Gayoso De Lemos to Carondelet, Nogales, July 25, 1793.]
Carondelet's Tortuous Intrigues.
The divided condition of the Creeks, some of whom wished to carry out in
good faith the treaty of New York, while the others threatened to attack
whoever made any move towards putting the treaty into effect, puzzled
Carondelet nearly as much as it did the United States authorities; and
he endeavored to force the Creeks to abstain from warfare with the
Chickasaws by refusing to supply them with munitions of war for any such
purpose, or for any other except to oppose the frontiersmen. He put
great faith in the endeavor to treat the Americans not as one nation,
but as an assemblage of different communities. The Spaniards sought to
placate the Kentuckians by promising to reduce the duties on the goods
that came down stream to New Orleans by six per cent., and thus to
prevent an outbreak on their part; at the same time the United States
Government was kept occupied by idle negotiations. Carondelet further
hoped to restrain the Cumberland people by fear of the Creek and
Cherokee nations, who, he remarked, "had never ceased to commit
hostilities upon them and to profess implacable hatred for them."
[Footnote: Carondelet to De Lemos, Aug. 15, 1793.] He reported to the
Spanish Court that Spain had no means of molesting the Americans save
through the Indians, as it would not be possible with an army to make a
serious impression on the "ferocious and well-armed" frontier people,
favored as they would be by their knowledge of the country; whereas the
Indians, if properly supported, offered an excellent defence, supplying
from the Southwestern tribes fifteen thousand warriors, whose keep in
time of peace cost Spain not more than fifty thousand dollars a year,
and even in time of war not more than a hundred and fifty thousand.
[Footnote: Carondelet to Alcudia, Sept. 27, 1793.]
He Continually Incites the Indians to War.
The Spaniards in this manner actively fomented hostilities among the
Creeks and Cherokees. Their support explained much in the attitude of
these peoples, but doubtless the war would have gone on anyhow until the
savages were thoroughly cowed by force of arms. The chief causes for the
incessantly renewed hostilities were the desire of the young braves for
blood and glory, a vague but well-founded belief among the Indians that
the white advance meant their ruin unless stayed by an appeal to arms,
and, more important still, the absolute lack of any central authority
among the tribesmen which could compel them all to war together
effectively on the one hand, or all to make peace on the other.
Seagrove the Indian Agent.
Blount was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Indians as
well as Governor of the Territory; and in addition the Federal
authorities established an Indian agent, directly responsible to
themselves, among the Creeks. His name was James Seagrove. He did his
best to bring about a peace, and, like all Indian agents, he was apt to
take an unduly harsh view of the deeds of the frontiersmen, and to
consider them the real aggressors in any trouble. Of necessity his point
of view was wholly different from that of the border settlers. He was
promptly informed of all the outrages and aggressions committed by the
whites, while he heard little or nothing of the parties of young braves,
bent on rapine, who continually fell on the frontiers; whereas the
frontiersmen came in contact only with these war bands, and when their
kinsfolk had been murdered and their cattle driven off, they were
generally ready to take vengeance on the first Indians they could find.
Even Seagrove, however, was at times hopelessly puzzled by the attitude
of the Indians. He was obliged to admit that they were the first
offenders, after the conclusion of the treaties of New York and Holston,
and that for a long time the settlers behaved with great moderation in
refraining from revenging the outrages committed on them by the Indians,
which, he remarked, would have to be stopped if peace was to be
preserved. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., Seagrove to the
Secretary of War, St. Mary's, June 14, 1792.]
Disorder among the Frontiersmen.
McGillivray Bewildered.
As the Government took no efficient steps to preserve the peace, either
by chastising the Indians or by bridling the ill-judged vengeance of the
frontier inhabitants, many of the latter soon grew to hate and despise
those by whom they were neither protected nor restrained. The disorderly
element got the upper hand on the Georgia frontier, where the
backwoodsmen did all they could to involve the nation in a general
Indian war; and displayed the most defiant and mutinous spirit toward
the officers, civil and military, of the United States Government.
[Footnote: _Do_., Seagrove to the President, Rock Landing, on the
Oconee, in Georgia, July 17, 1792.] As for the Creeks, Seagrove found it
exceedingly hard to tell who of them were traitors and who were not; and
indeed the chiefs would probably themselves have found the task
difficult, for they were obliged to waver more or less in their course
as the fickle tribesmen were swayed by impulses towards peace or war.
One of the men whom Seagrove finally grew to regard as a confirmed
traitor was the chief, McGillivray. He was probably quite right in his
estimate of the half-breed's character; and, on the other hand,
McGillivray doubtless had as an excuse the fact that the perpetual
intrigues of Spanish officers, American traders, British adventurers,
Creek chiefs who wished peace, and Creek warriors who wished war, made
it out of the question for him to follow any settled policy. He wrote to
Seagrove: "It is no wonder the Indians are distracted, when they are
tampered with on every side. I am myself in the situation of a keeper
of Bedlam, and nearly fit for an inhabitant." [Footnote: American State
Papers, IV., McGillivray to Seagrove, May 18, 1793.] However, what he
did amounted to but little, for his influence had greatly waned, and
in 1793 he died.
The Indians the Aggressors.
On the Georgia frontier the backwoodsmen were very rough and lawless,
and were always prone to make aggressions on the red men; nevertheless,
even in the case of Georgia in 1791 and '92, the chief fault lay with
the Indians. They refused to make good the land cession which they had
solemnly guaranteed at the treaty of New York, and which certain of
their towns had previously covenanted to make in the various more or
less fraudulent treaties entered into with the State of Georgia
separately. In addition to this their plundering parties continually
went among the Georgians. The latter, in their efforts to retaliate,
struck the hostile and the peaceful alike; and as time went on they made
ready to take forcible possession of the lands they coveted, without
regard to whether or not these lands had been ceded in fair treaty.
In the Tennessee country the wrong was wholly with the Indians. Some of
the chiefs of the Cherokees went to Philadelphia at the beginning of the
year 1792 to request certain modifications of the treaty of Holston,
notably an increase in their annuity, which was granted. [Footnote:
_Do_., Secretary of War to Governor Blount, Jan. 31, 1792.]
Their Outrages on the Tennesseeans.
The General Government had conducted the treaties in good faith and had
given the Indians what they asked. The frontiersmen did not molest them
in any way or trespass upon their lands; yet their ravages continued
without cessation. The authorities at Washington made but feeble efforts
to check these outrages, and protect the southwestern settlers. Yet at
this time Tennessee was doing her full part in sustaining the National
Government in the war against the Northwestern tribes; a company of
Tennessee militia, under Captain Jacob Tipton, joined St. Clair's army,
and Tipton was slain at the defeat, where he fought with the utmost
bravery. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, Dec. 17, 1791. I use the word
"Tennessee" for convenience; it was not at this time used in this
sense.] Not unnaturally the Tennesseeans, and especially the settlers on
the far-off Cumberland, felt it a hardship for the United States to
neglect their defence at the very time that they were furnishing their
quota of soldiers for an offensive war against nations in whose subdual
they had but an indirect interest. Robertson wrote to Blount that their
silence and remoteness was the cause why the interests of the Cumberland
settlers were thus neglected, while the Kentuckians were amply
protected. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Robertson's letter, Nashville,
Aug. 25, 1791.]
Anger of the Tennesseeans.
Blindness of the Federal Government.
Naturally the Tennesseeans, conscious that they had not wronged the
Indians, and had scrupulously observed the treaty, grew imbittered over,
the wanton Indian outrages. They were entirely at a loss to explain the
reason why the warfare against them was waged with such ferocity. Sevier
wrote to Madison, with whom he frequently corresponded: "This country is
wholly involved in a war with the Creek and Cherokee Indians, and I am
not able to suggest the reasons or the pretended cause of their
depredations. The successes of the Northern tribes over our late
unfortunate armies have created great exultation throughout the whole
Southern Indians, and the probabilities may be they expect to be equally
successful. The Spaniards are making use of all their art to draw over
the Southern tribes, and I fear may have stimulated them to commence
their hostilities. Governor Blount has indefatigably labored to keep
these people in a pacific humor, but in vain. War is unavoidable,
however ruinous and calamitous it may be." [Footnote: State Dep. MSS.,
Madison Papers, Sevier's letter, Oct. 30, 1792.] The Federal Government
was most reluctant to look facts in the face and acknowledge that the
hostilities were serious, and that they were unprovoked by the whites.
The Secretary of War reported to the President that the offenders were
doubtless merely a small banditti of Creeks and Cherokees, with a few
Shawnees who possessed no fixed residence; and in groping for a remedy
he weakly suggested that inasmuch as many of the Cherokees seemed to be
dissatisfied with the boundary line they had established by treaty it
would perhaps be well to alter it. [Footnote: State Dep. MSS.,
Washington Papers, Secretary of War to the President, July 28, and Aug.
5, 1792.] Of course the adoption of such a measure would have amounted
to putting a premium on murder and treachery.
Odd Manifestations of Particularistic Feeling.
If the Easterners were insensible to the Western need for a vigorous
Indian war, many of the Westerners showed as little appreciation of the
necessity for any Indian war which did not immediately concern
themselves. Individual Kentuckians, individual colonels and captains of
the Kentucky militia, were always ready to march to the help of the
Tennesseeans against the Southern Indians; but the highest officials of
Kentucky were almost as anxious as the Federal authorities to prevent
any war save that with the tribes northwest of the Ohio. One of the
Kentucky senators, Brown, in writing to the Governor, Isaac Shelby, laid
particular stress upon the fact that nothing but the most urgent
necessity could justify a war with the Southern Indians. [Footnote:
Shelby MSS., J. Brown to Isaac Shelby, Philadelphia, June 2, 1793.]
Shelby himself sympathized with this feeling. He knew what an Indian war
was, for he had owed his election largely to his record as an Indian
fighter and to the confidence the Kentuckians felt in his power to
protect them from their red foes. [Footnote: _Do_., M. D. Hardin to
Isaac Shelby, April 10, 1792, etc., etc.] His correspondence is filled
with letters in relation to Indian affairs, requests to authorize the
use of spies, requests to establish guards along the wilderness road and
to garrison blockhouses on the frontier; and sometimes there are more
pathetic letters, from a husband who had lost a wife, or from an "old,
frail woman," who wished to know if the Governor could not by some means
get news of her little granddaughter who had been captured in the
wilderness two years before by a party of Indians. [Footnote: _Do._,
Letter of Mary Mitchell to Isaac Shelby, May 1, 1793.] He realized fully
what hostilities meant, and had no desire to see his State plunged into
any Indian war which could be avoided.
Yet, in spite of this cautious attitude, Shelby had much influence with
the people of the Tennessee territory. They confided to him their
indignation with Blount for stopping Logan's march to the aid of
Robertson; while on the other hand the Virginians, when anxious to
prevent the Cumberland settlers from breaking the peace, besought him to
use his influence with them in order to make them do what was
right. [Footnote: Shelby MSS., Arthur Campbell to Shelby, January 6,
1890; letter from Cumberland to Shelby, May 11, 1793; John Logan to
Shelby, June 19, 1794; petition of inhabitants of Nelson County, May 9,
1793.] When such a man as Shelby was reluctant to see the United States
enter into open hostilities with the Southern Indians, there is small
cause for wonder in the fact that the authorities at the National
capital did their best to deceive themselves into the belief that there
was no real cause for war.
Intolerable Hardships of the Settlers.
Inability to look facts in the face did not alter the facts. The Indian
ravages in the Southern Territory grew steadily more and more serious.
The difficulties of the settlers were enormously increased because the
United States strictly forbade any offensive measures. The militia were
allowed to drive off any war bands found among the settlements with
evidently hostile intent; but, acting under the explicit, often
repeated, and emphatic commands of the General Government, Blount was
obliged to order the militia under no circumstances to assume the
offensive, or to cross into the Indian hunting grounds beyond the
boundaries established by the treaty of Holston. [Footnote: Robertson
MSS., Blount to Robertson, April 1, 1792.] The inhabitants of the
Cumberland region, and of the frontier counties generally, petitioned
strongly against this, stating that "the frontiers will break if the
inroads of the savages are not checked by counter expeditions."
[Footnote: _Do_., Feb. 1, 1792.]
Blount's Good Conduct.
It was a very disagreeable situation for Blount, who, in carrying out
the orders of the Federal authorities, had to incur the ill-will of the
people whom he had been appointed to govern; but even at the cost of
being supposed to be lukewarm in the cause of the settlers, he loyally
endeavored to execute the commands of his superiors. Yet like every
other man acquainted by actual experience with frontier life and Indian
warfare, he knew the folly of defensive war against Indians. At this
very time the officers on the frontier of South Carolina, which was not
a State that was at all inclined to unjust aggression against the
Indians, notified the Governor that the defensive war was "expensive,
hazardous, and distressing" to the settlers, because the Indians "had
such advantages, being so wolfish in their manner and so savage in their
nature," that it was impossible to make war upon them on equal terms if
the settlers were confined to defending themselves in their own country,
whereas a speedy and spirited counter-attack upon them in their homes
would probably reduce them to peace, as their mode of warfare fitted
them much less to oppose such an attack than to "take skulking, wolfish
advantages of the defenceless" settlers. [Footnote: American State
Papers, IV., Robert Anderson to the Governor of South Carolina, Sep. 20,
1792.]
Doublefaced Conduct of the Creeks and Cherokees.
The difficulties of Blount and the Tennessee frontiersmen were increased
by the very fact that the Cherokees and Creeks still nominally remained
at peace. The Indian towns nearest the frontier knew that they were
jeopardized by the acts of their wilder brethren, and generally strove
to avoid committing any offense themselves. The war parties from the
remote towns were the chief offenders. Band after band came up from
among the Creeks or from among the lower Cherokees, and, passing through
the peaceful villages of the upper Cherokees, fell on the frontier,
stole horses, ambushed men, killed or captured women and children, and
returned whence they had come. In most cases it was quite impossible to
determine even the tribe of the offenders with any certainty; and all
that the frontiersmen knew was that their bloody trails led back towards
the very villages where the Indians loudly professed that they were at
peace. They soon grew to regard all the Indians with equal suspicion,
and they were so goaded by the blows which they could not return that
they were ready to take vengeance upon any one with a red skin, or at
least to condone such vengeance when taken. The peaceful Cherokees,
though they regretted these actions and were alarmed and disquieted at
the probable consequences, were unwilling or unable to punish the
aggressors.
Blount Warns the Federal Government.
Blount was soon at his wits' ends to prevent the outbreak of a general
war. In November, 1792, he furnished the War Department with a list of
scores of people--men, women, and children--who had been killed in
Tennessee, chiefly in the Cumberland district, since the signing of the
treaty of Holston. Many others had been carried off, and were kept in
slavery. Among the wounded were General Robertson and one of his sons,
who were shot, although not fatally, in May, 1792, while working on
their farm. Both Creeks and Cherokees took part in the outrages, and the
Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee, at Running Water, Nickajack, and in
the neighborhood, ultimately supplied the most persistent
wrongdoers. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., Blount to Secretary of
War, Nov. 8, 1792; also page 330, etc. Many of these facts will be found
recited, not only in the correspondence of Blount, but in the Robertson
MSS., in the _Knoxville Gazette_, and in Haywood, Ramsey, and Putman.]
Effect of the Defeat of Harmar and St. Clair.
Growth of the War Spirit.
As Sevier remarked, the Southern, no less than the Northern Indians were
much excited and encouraged by the defeat of St. Clair, coming as it did
so close upon the defeat of Harmar. The double disaster to the American
arms made the young braves very bold, and it became impossible for the
elder men to restrain them. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., pp.
263, 439, etc.] The Creeks harassed the frontiers of Georgia somewhat,
but devoted their main attention to the Tennesseeans, and especially to
the isolated settlements on the Cumberland. The Chickamauga towns were
right at the crossing place both for the Northern Indians when they came
south and for the Creeks when they went north. Bands of Shawnees, who
were at this time the most inveterate of the enemies of the
frontiersmen, passed much time among them; and the Creek war parties,
when they journeyed north to steal horses and get scalps, invariably
stopped among them, and on their return stopped again to exhibit their
trophies and hold scalp dances. The natural effect was that the
Chickamaugas, who were mainly Lower Town Cherokees, seeing the impunity
with which the ravages were committed, and appreciating the fact that
under the orders of the Government they could not be molested in their
own homes by the whites, began to join in the raids; and their nearness
to the settlements soon made them the worst offenders. One of their
leading chiefs was John Watts, who was of mixed blood. Among all these
Southern Indians, half-breeds were far more numerous than among the
Northerners, and when the half-breeds lived with their mothers' people
they usually became the deadliest enemies of their fathers' race. Yet,
they generally preserved the father's name. In consequence, among the
extraordinary Indian titles borne by the chiefs of the Creeks, Cherokees,
and Choctaws--the Bloody Fellow, the Middle Striker, the Mad Dog, the
Glass, the Breath--there were also many names like John Watts, Alexander
Cornell, and James Colbert, which were common among the frontiersmen
themselves.
Fruitless Peace Negotiations.
These Chickamaugas, and Lower Cherokees, had solemnly entered into
treaties of peace, and Blount had been taken in by their professions of
friendship, and for some time was loath to believe that their warriors
were among war parties who ravaged the settlements. By the spring of
1792, however, the fact of their hostility could no longer be concealed.
Nevertheless, in May of that year the chiefs of the Lower Cherokee
Towns, joined with those of the Upper Towns in pressing Governor Blount
to come to a council at Coyatee, where he was met by two thousand
Cherokees, including all their principal chiefs and warriors. [Footnote:
Robertson's MSS., Blount to Robertson, May 20, 1792.] The head men, not
only from the Upper Towns, but from Nickajack and Running Water,
including John Watts, solemnly assured Blount of their peaceful
intentions, and expressed their regret at the outrages which they
admitted had been committed by their young men. Blount told them plainly
that he had the utmost difficulty in restraining the whites from taking
vengeance for the numerous murders committed on the settlers, and warned
them that if they wished to avert a war which would fall upon both the
innocent and the guilty they must themselves keep the peace. The chiefs
answered, with seeming earnestness, that they were most desirous of
being at peace, and would certainly restrain their men; and they begged
for the treaty goods which Blount had in his possession. So sincere did
they seem that he gave them the goods. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_,
March 24,1792; American State Papers, IV., Blount to Secretary of War,
June 2, 1792, with minutes of conference at Coyatee.]
This meeting began on the 17th of May, yet on the 16th, within twelve
miles of Knoxville, two boys were killed and scalped while picking
strawberries, and on the 13th a girl had been scalped within four miles
of Nashville; and on the 17th itself, while Judge Campbell of the
Territorial Court was returning from the Cumberland Circuit his party
was attacked, and one killed. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 2,
1792.]
Chickamaugas Make Open War.
Try to Deceive Blount.
When such outrages were committed at the very time the treaty was being
held, it was hopeless to expect peace. In September the Chickamaugas
threw off the mask and made open war. When the news was received Blount
called out the militia and sent word to Robertson that some friendly
Cherokees had given warning that a big war party was about to fall on
the settlements round Nashville. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV.,
Blount to Secretary of War, Sept. 11, 1792.] Finding that the warning
had been given, the Chickamauga chiefs sought to lull their foes into
security by a rather adroit peace of treachery. Two of their chiefs, The
Glass and The Bloody Fellow, wrote to Blount complaining that they had
assembled their warriors because they were alarmed over rumors of a
desire on the part of the whites to maltreat them; and on the receipt of
assurances from Blount that they were mistaken, they announced their
pleasure and stated that no hostilities would be undertaken. Blount was
much relieved at this, and thought that the danger of an outbreak was
past. Accordingly he wrote to Robertson telling him that he could disband
his troops, as there was no longer need of them. Robertson, however, knew
the Indian character as few men did know it, and, moreover, he had
received confidential information about the impending raid from a
half-breed and a Frenchman who were among the Indians. He did not disband
his troops, and wrote to Blount that The Glass and The Bloody Fellow had
undoubtedly written as they did simply to deceive him and to secure their
villages from a counter-attack while they were off on their raid against
the Cumberland people. Accordingly three hundred militia were put under
arms. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 6, 1792;
Blount to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 10, 1792; to Robertson, Sept. 12;
to The Glass, Sept. 13; to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 13; to Robertson,
Sept. 14; Robertson to Blount, Sept. 26, 1792.]
Attack Buchanan's Station.
Failure of the Attack.
It was well that the whites were on their guard. Towards the end of
September a big war party, under the command of John Watts and including
some two hundred Cherokees, eighty Creeks, and some Shawnees, left the
Chickamauga Towns and marched swiftly and silently to the Cumberland
district. They attempted to surprise one of the more considerable of the
lonely little forted towns. It was known as Buchanan's Station, and in
it there were several families, including fifteen "gun-men." Two spies
went out from it to scour the country and give warning of any Indian
advance; but with the Cherokees were two very white half-breeds, whose
Indian blood was scarcely noticeable, and these two men met the spies
and decoyed them to their death. The Indians then, soon after midnight
on the 30th of September, sought to rush the station by surprise. The
alarm was given by the running of the frightened cattle, and when the
sentinel fired at the assailants they were not ten yards from the gate
of the blockhouse. The barred door withstood the shock and the
flame-flashes lit up the night as the gun-men fired through the
loop-holes. The Indians tried to burn the fort, one of the chiefs, a
half-breed, leaping on the roof; he was shot through the thigh and
rolled off; but he stayed close to the logs trying to light them with
his torch, alternately blowing it into a blaze and halloing to the
Indians to keep on with the attack. However, he was slain, as was the
Shawnee head chief, and several warriors, while John Watts, leader of
the expedition, was shot through both thighs. The log walls of the grim
little blockhouse stood out black in the fitful glare of the cane torches;
and tongues of red fire streamed into the night as the rifles rang. The
attack had failed, and the throng of dark, flitting forms faded into
the gloom as the baffled Indians retreated. So disheartened were they
by the check, and by the loss they had suffered, that they did not
further molest the settlements, but fell back to their strongholds across
the Tennessee. Among the Cherokee chiefs who led the raid were two
signers of the treaty of Holston. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to
Robertson, Oct. 17, 1792; _Knoxville Gazette_, Oct. 10, and Oct. 20,
1792; Brown's Narrative, in _Southwestern Monthly_.]
Monotony of the Indian Outrages.
After this the war was open, so far as the Indians of the Lower Cherokee
Towns and of many of the Creek Towns were concerned; but the whites were
still restrained by strict orders from the United States authorities,
who refused to allow them to retaliate. Outrage followed outrage in
monotonously bloody succession. The Creeks were the worst offenders in
point of numbers, but the Lower Cherokees from the Chickamauga towns did
most harm according to their power. Sometimes the bands that entered the
settlements were several hundred strong; but their chief object was
plunder, and they rarely attacked the strong places of the white
frontiersmen, though they forced them to keep huddled in the stockaded
stations; nor did they often fight a pitched battle with the larger
bodies of militia. There is no reason for reciting in full the countless
deeds of rapine and murder. The incidents, though with infinite variety
of detail, were in substance the same as in all the Indian wars of the
backwoods. Men, women, and children were killed or captured; outlying
cabins were attacked and burned; the husbandman was shot as he worked in
the field, and the housewife as she went for water. The victim was now a
militiaman on his way to join his company, now one of a party of
immigrants, now a settler on his lonely farm, and now a justice of the
peace going to Court, or a Baptist preacher striving to reach the
Cumberland country that he might preach the word of God to the people
who had among them no religious instructor. The express messengers and
post riders, who went through the wilderness from one commander to the
other, always rode at hazard of their lives. In one of Blount's letters
to Robertson he remarks: "Your letter of the 6th of February sent
express by James Russell was handed to me, much stained with his blood,
by Mr. Shannon, who accompanied him." Russell had been wounded in an
ambuscade, and his fifty dollars were dearly earned. [Footnote:
Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, March 8, 1794. The files of the
_Knoxville Gazette_ are full of details of these outrages, and so are
the letters of Blount to the Secretary of War given in the American
State Papers, as well as the letters of Blount and Robertson in the two
bound volumes of Robertson MSS. Many of them are quoted in more
accessible form in Haywood.]
Horse-stealing.
Brutal White Ruffians.
The Indians were even more fond of horse-stealing than of murder, and
they found a ready market for their horses not only in their own nations
and among the Spaniards, but among the American frontiersmen themselves.
Many of the unscrupulous white scoundrels who lived on the borders of
the Indian country made a regular practice of receiving the stolen
horses. As soon as a horse was driven from the Tennessee or Cumberland
it was hurried through the Indian country to the Carolina or Georgia
frontiers, where the red thieves delivered it to the foul white
receivers, who took it to some town on the seaboard, so as effectually
to prevent a recovery. At Swannanoa in North Carolina, among the lawless
settlements at the foot of the Oconee Mountain in South Carolina, and at
Tugaloo in Georgia, there were regular markets for these stolen horses.
[Footnote: Blount to the Secretary of War, May 5, 1792, and Nov. 10,
1794. As before, I use the word "Tennessee" instead of "Southwestern
Territory" for convenience; it was not regularly employed until 1796.]
There were then, and continued to exist as long as the frontier lasted,
plenty of white men who, though ready enough to wrong the Indians, were
equally ready to profit by the wrongs they inflicted on the white
settlers, and to encourage their misdeeds if profit was thereby to be
made. Very little evildoing of this kind took place Tennessee, for
Blount, backed by Sevier and Robertson, was vigilant to put it down; but
as yet the Federal Government was not firm in its seat, and its arm was
not long enough to reach into the remote frontier districts, where
lawlessness of every kind throve, and the whites wronged one another as
recklessly as they wronged the Indians.
Sufferings of the Honest Settlers.
Blount's Efforts to Prevent Brutality.
The white scoundrels throve in the confusion of a nominal peace which
the savages broke at will; but the honest frontiersmen really suffered
more than if there had been open war, as the Federal Government refused
to allow raids to be carried into the Indian territory, and in
consequence the marauding Indians could at any time reach a place of
safety. The blockhouses were of little consequence in putting a stop to
Indian attacks. The most efficient means of defence was the employment
of the hardiest and best hunters as scouts or spies, for they travelled
hither and thither through the woods and continually harried the war
parties. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., p. 364; letter of
Secretary of War, May 30, 1793.] The militia bands also travelled to and
fro, marching to the rescue of some threatened settlement, or seeking to
intercept the attacking bands or to overtake those who had delivered
their stroke and were returning to the Indian country. Generally they
failed in the pursuit. Occasionally they were themselves ambushed,
attacked, and dispersed; sometimes they overtook and scattered their
foes. In such a case they were as little apt to show mercy to the
defeated as were the Indians themselves. Blount issued strict orders
that squaws and children were not to be slain, and the frontiersmen did
generally refuse to copy their antagonists in butchering the women
and children in cold blood. When an attack was made on a camp, however,
it was no uncommon thing to have the squaws killed while the fight was
hot. Blount, in one of his letters to Robertson, after the Cumberland
militia had attacked and destroyed a Creek war party which had murdered
a settler, expressed his pleasure at the perseverance with which the
militia captain had followed the Indians to the banks of the Tennessee,
where he had been lucky enough to overtake them in a position where not
one was able to escape. Blount especially complimented him upon having
spared the two squaws, "as all civilized people should"; and he added
that in so doing the captain's conduct offered a most agreeable contrast
to the behavior of some of his fellow citizens under like circumstances.
[Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount's letter, March 8, 1794.]
Repeated Failures to Secure Peace.
Repeated efforts were made to secure peace with the Indians. Andrew
Pickens, of South Carolina, was sent to the exposed frontier in 1792 to
act as peace Commissioner. Pickens was a high-minded and honorable man,
who never hesitated to condemn the frontiersmen when they wronged the
Indians, and he was a champion of the latter wherever possible. He came
out with every hope and belief that he could make a permanent treaty;
but after having been some time on the border he was obliged to admit
that there was no chance of bringing about even a truce, and that the
nominal peace that obtained was worse for the settlers than actual war.
He wrote to Blount that though he earnestly hoped the people of the
border would observe the treaty, yet that the Cherokees had done more
damage, especially in the way of horse stealing, since the treaty was
signed than ever before, and that it was not possible to say what the
frontier inhabitants might be provoked to do. He continued: "While a
part, and that the ostensible ruling part, of a nation affect to be at,
and I believe really are for, peace, and the more active young men are
frequently killing people and stealing horses, it is extremely difficult
to know how to act. The people, even the most exposed, would prefer an
open war to such a situation. The reason is obvious. A man would then
know when he saw an Indian he saw an enemy, and would be prepared and
act accordingly." [Footnote: American State Papers, Pickens to Blount,
Hopewell, April 28, 1792.]
The Georgia Frontier.
The people of Tennessee were the wronged, and not the wrongdoers, and it
was upon them that the heaviest strokes of the Indians fell. The Georgia
frontiers were also harried continually, although much less severely;
but the Georgians were themselves far from blameless. Georgia was the
youngest, weakest, and most lawless of the original thirteen States, and
on the whole her dealings with the Indians were far from creditable,
More than once she inflicted shameful wrong on the Cherokees. The
Creeks, however, generally wronged her more than she wronged them, and
at this particular period even the Georgia frontiersmen were much less
to blame than were their Indian foes. By fair treaty the Indians had
agreed to cede to the whites lands upon which they now refused to allow
them to settle. They continually plundered and murdered the outlying
Georgia settlers; and the militia, in their retaliatory expeditions,
having no knowledge of who the murderers actually were, quite as often
killed the innocent as the guilty. One of the complaints of the Indians
was that the Georgians came in parties to hunt on the neutral ground,
and slew quantities of deer and turkeys by fire hunting at night and by
still hunting with the rifle in the daytime, while they killed many
bears by the aid of their "great gangs of dogs." [Footnote: American
State Papers, Timothy Barnard to James Seagrove, March 26, 1793.] This
could hardly be called a legitimate objection on the part of the Creeks,
however, for their own hunting parties ranged freely through the lands
they had ceded to the whites and killed game wherever they could find
it.
Evil and fearful deeds were done by both sides. Peaceful Indians, even
envoys, going to the treaty grounds were slain in cold blood; and all
that the Georgians could allege by way of offset was that the savages
themselves had killed many peaceful whites.
Brutal Nature of the Contest in Georgia.
The Georgia frontiersmen openly showed their sullen hatred of the United
States authorities. The Georgia State government was too weak to enforce
order. It could neither keep the peace among its own frontiersmen,
nor wage effective war on the Indians; for when the militia did gather
to invade the Creek country they were so mutinous and disorderly that
the expeditions generally broke up without accomplishing anything. At
one period a militia general, Elijah Clark, actually led a large party
of frontiersmen into the unceded Creek hunting grounds with the purpose
of setting up an independent government; but the Georgia authorities for
once summoned energy sufficient to break up this lawless community.
[Footnote: American State Papers, IV., pp. 260, 295, 365, 394, 397, 410,
412, 417, 427, 473, etc.; _Knoxville Gazette_, Sept. 26, 1794. For
further allusion to Clark's settlement, see next chapter.]
Blount's Faithful Efforts to Preserve the Peace.
The Georgians were thus far from guiltless themselves, though at this
time they were more sinned against than sinning; but in the Tennessee
Territory the white settlers behaved very well throughout these years,
and showed both patience and fairness in their treatment of the Indians.
Blount did his best to prevent outrages, and Sevier and Robertson
heartily seconded him. In spite of the grumbling of the frontiersmen,
and in spite of repeated and almost intolerable provocation in the way
of Indian forays, Blount steadily refused to allow counter-expeditions
into the Indian territory, and stopped both the Tennesseeans and
Kentuckians when they prepared to make such expeditions. [Footnote:
Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 8, 1793; to Benjamin Logan,
Nov. 1, 1794, etc.] Judge Campbell, the same man who was himself
attacked by the Indians when returning from his circuit, in his charge
to the Grand Jury at the end of 1791, particularly warned them to stop
any lawless attack upon the Indians. In November, 1792, when five
Creeks, headed by a Scotch half-breed, retreated to the Cherokee town of
Chiloa with stolen horses, a band of fifty whites gathered to march
after them and destroy the Cherokee town; but Sevier dispersed them and
made them go to their own homes. The following February a still larger
band gathered to attack the Cherokee towns and were dispersed by Blount
himself. Robertson, in the summer of 1793, prevented militia parties
from crossing the Tennessee in retaliation. In October, 1794, the Grand
Jury of Hamilton County entreated and adjured the people, in spite of
the Indian outrages to stand firmly by the law, and not to try to be
their own avengers; and when some whites settled in Powell's Valley, on
Cherokee lands, Governor Blount promptly turned them off. [Footnote:
_Knoxville Gazette_, Dec. 31, 1791; Nov. 17, 1792; Jan. 25, 1793; Feb.
9, Mar. 23, July 13, Sept. 14, 1793; Nov. 1 and 15, 1794; May 8, 1795.]
Seagrove's Difficulties.
The unfortunate Indian agent among the Creeks, Seagrove, speedily became
an object of special detestation to the frontiersmen generally, and the
inhabitants of the Tennessee country in particular, because he
persistently reported that he thought the Creeks peaceable, and deemed
their behavior less blameable than that of the whites. His attitude was
natural, for probably most of the Creek chiefs with whom he came in
contact were friendly, and many of those who were not professed to be so
when in his company, if only for the sake of getting the goods he had to
distribute; and of course they brought him word whenever the Georgians
killed a Creek, either innocent or guilty, without telling him of the
offence which the Georgians were blindly trying to revenge. Seagrove
himself had some rude awakenings. After reporting to the Central
Government at Philadelphia that the Creeks were warm in professing the
most sincere friendship, he would suddenly find, to his horror, that
they were sending off war parties and acting in concert with the
Shawnees; and at one time they actually, without any provocation,
attacked a trading store kept by his own brother, and killed the two men
who were managing it. [Footnote: American State Papers, Seagrove to James
Holmes, Feb. 24, 1793; to Mr. Payne, April 14, 1793.] Most of the
Creeks, however, professed, and doubtless felt, regret at these
outrages, and Seagrove continued to represent their conduct in a
favorable light to the Central Government, though he was forced to admit
that certain of the towns were undoubtedly hostile and could not be
controlled by the party which was for peace.
Blount calls Seagrove to Account.
Blount was much put out at the fact that Seagrove was believed at
Philadelphia when he reported the Creeks to be at peace. In a letter to
Seagrove, at the beginning of 1794, Blount told him sharply that as far
as the Cumberland district was concerned the Creeks had been the only
ones to blame since the treaty of New York, for they had killed or
enslaved over two hundred whites, attacking them in their houses,
fields, or on the public roads, and had driven off over a thousand
horses, while the Americans had done the Creeks no injuries whatever
except in defence of their homes and lives, or in pursuing war parties.
It was possible of course that occasionally an innocent hunter suffered
with the guilty marauders, but this was because he was off his own
hunting grounds; and the treaty explicitly showed that the Creeks had no
claim to the Cumberland region, while there was not a particle of truth
in their assertion that since the treaty had been entered into there had
been intrusion on their hunting grounds. Seagrove, in response, wrote
that he believed the Creeks and Cherokees sincerely desired peace. This
was followed forthwith by new outrages, and Blount wrote to Robertson:
"It does really seem as if assurances from Mr. Seagrove of the peaceful
disposition of the Creeks was the prelude to their murdering and
plundering the inhabitants of your district." [Footnote: Robertson MSS.,
Blount to Robertson, Feb. 13, 1793; Blount to James Seagrove, Jan. 9,
1794; Seagrove to Blount, Feb. 10, 1794; Blount to Robertson, March 8,
1794.] The _Knoxville Gazette_ called attention to the fact that
Seagrove had written a letter to the effect that the Creeks were well
disposed, just four days before the attack on Buchanan Station. On
September 22d Seagrove wrote stating that the Creeks were peaceable,
that all their chief men ardently wished for the cessation of
hostilities, and that they had refused the request of the Cherokees to
go to war with the United States; and his deputy agent, Barnard,
reiterated the assertions and stated that the Upper Creeks had remained
quiet, although six of their people had been killed at the mouth of the
Tennessee. The _Gazette_ thereupon published a list of twenty-one men,
women, and children who at that very time were held in slavery in the
Creek towns, and enumerated scores of murders which had been committed
by the Creeks during precisely the period when Seagrove and Barnard
described them as so desirous of peace. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_,
Dec. 29, 1792; Dec. 19, 1793.]
Increasing Indignation of the Settlers.
Under such circumstances the settlers naturally grew indignant with the
United States because they were not protected, and were not even allowed
to defend themselves by punishing their foes. The Creeks and Cherokees
were receiving their annuities regularly, and many presents in addition,
while their outrages continued unceasingly. The Nashville people
complained that the Creeks were "as busy in killing and scalping as if
they had been paid three thousand dollars for so doing, in the room of
fifteen hundred dollars to keep the peace." [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazette_, March 23, 1793.] A public address was issued in the _Knoxville
Gazette_ by the Tennesseeans on the subjects of their wrongs. In
respectful and loyal language, but firmly, the Tennesseeans called the
attention of the Government authorities to their sufferings. They avowed
the utmost devotion to the Union and a determination to stand by the
laws, but insisted that it would be absolutely necessary for them to
take measures to defend themselves by retaliating on the Indians.
Nature of the Indian Inroads.
A feature of the address was its vivid picture of the nature of the
ordinary Indian inroad and of the lack of any definite system of defence
on the frontier. It stated that the Indian raid or outbreak was usually
first made known either by the murder of some defenceless farmer, the
escape of some Indian trader, or the warning of some friendly Indian who
wished to avoid mischief. The first man who received the news, not
having made any agreement with the other members of the community as to
his course in such an emergency, ran away to his kinsfolk as fast as he
could. Every neighbor caught the alarm, thought himself the only person
left to fight, and got off on the same route as speedily as possible,
until, luckily for all, the meeting of the roads on the general retreat,
the difficulty of the way, the straying of horses, and sometimes the
halting to drink whiskey, put a stop to "the hurly-burly of the flight"
and reminded the fugitives that by this time they were in sufficient
force to rally; and then they would return "to explore the plundered
country and to bury the unfortunate scalped heads in the fag-end of the
retreat"; whereas if there had been an appointed rendezvous where all
could rally it would have prevented such a flight from what might
possibly have been a body of Indians far inferior in numbers to the
armed men of the settlements attacked. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_,
April 6, 1793.]
The Frontiersmen Ask Permission to Retaliate.
The convention of Mero district early petitioned Congress for the right
to retaliate on the Indians and to follow them to their towns, stating
that they had refrained from doing so hitherto not from cowardice, but
only from regard to Government, and that they regretted that their
"rulers" (the Federal authorities at Philadelphia) did not enter into
their feelings or seem to sympathize with them. [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazette_, August 13, 1792.] When the Territorial Legislature met in 1794
it petitioned Congress for war against the Creeks and Cherokees,
reciting the numerous outrages committed by them upon the whites;
stating that since 1792 the frontiersmen had been huddled together two
or three hundred to the station, anxiously expecting peace, or a legally
authorized war from which they would soon wring peace; and adding that
they were afraid of war in no shape, but that they asked that their
hands be unbound and they be allowed to defend themselves in the only
possible manner, by offensive war. They went on to say that, as members
of the Nation, they heartily approved of the hostilities which were then
being carried on against the Algerines for the protection of the
seafaring men of the coast-towns, and concluded: "The citizens who live
in poverty on the extreme frontier are as much entitled to be protected
in their lives, their families, and their little properties, as those
who roll in luxury, ease, and affluence in the great and opulent
Atlantic cities,"--for in frontier eyes the little seaboard
trading-towns assumed a rather comical aspect of magnificence. The
address was on the whole dignified in tone, and it undoubtedly set forth
both the wrong and the remedy with entire accuracy. The Tennesseeans
felt bitterly that the Federal Government did everything for Kentucky
and nothing for themselves, and they were rather inclined to sneer at
the difficulty experienced by the Kentuckians and the Federal army in
subduing the Northwestern Indians, while they themselves were left
single-handed to contend with the more numerous tribes of the South.
They were also inclined to laugh at the continual complaints the
Georgians made over the comparatively trivial wrongs they suffered from
the Indians, and at their inability either to control their own people
or to make war effectively. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, Feb. 26,
1794, March 27, 1794, etc., etc.]
The Situation Grows Intolerable.
Such a state of things as that which existed in the Tennessee territory
could not endure. The failure of the United States authorities to
undertake active offensive warfare and to protect the frontiersmen
rendered it inevitable that the frontiersmen should protect themselves;
and under the circumstances, when retaliation began it was certain
sometimes to fall upon the blameless. The rude militia officers began to
lead their retaliatory parties into the Indian lands, and soon the
innocent Indians suffered with the guilty, for the frontiersmen had no
means of distinguishing between them. The Indians who visited the
settlements with peaceful intent were of course at any time liable to be
mistaken for their brethren who were hostile, or else to be attacked by
scoundrels who were bent upon killing all red men alike. Thus, on one
day, as Blount reported, a friendly Indian passing the home of one of
the settlers was fired upon and wounded; while in the same region five
hostile Indians killed the wife and three children of a settler in his
sight; and another party stole a number of horses from a station; and
yet another party, composed of peaceful Indian hunters, was attacked at
night by some white militia, one man being killed and another wounded.
[Footnote: State Department MSS., Washington Papers, War Department, Ex.
C., page 19, extract of letter from Blount to Williamson, April 14,
1792.]
Scolacutta, the Friendly Cherokee.
One of the firm friends of the whites was Scolacutta, the chief of the
Upper Cherokees. He tried to keep his people at peace, and repeatedly
warned the whites of impending attacks, Nevertheless, he was unwilling
or unable to stop by force the war parties of Creeks and Lower Cherokees
who came through his towns to raid against the settlements and who
retreated to them again when the raids were ended. Many of his young men
joined the bands of horse-thieves and scalp-hunters. The marauders
wished to embroil him with the whites, and were glad that the latter
should see the bloody trails leading back to his towns. For two years
after the signing of the treaty of Holston the war parties thus passed
and repassed through his country, and received aid and comfort from his
people, and yet the whites refrained from taking vengeance; but the
vengeance was certain to come in the end.
His Village Attacked.
In March, 1793, Scolacutta's nearest neighbor, an Indian living next
door to him in his own town, and other Indians of the nearest towns,
joined one of the war parties which attacked the settlements and killed
two unarmed lads. [Footnote: American State Papers, Blount's letter,
March 20, 1793. Scolacutta was usually known to the whites as Hanging
Maw.] The Indians did nothing to the murderers, and the whites forbore
to attack them; but their patience was nearly exhausted. In June
following a captain, John Beard, with fifty mounted riflemen, fell in
with a small party of Indians who had killed several settlers. He
followed their trail to Scolacutta's town, where he slew eight or nine
Indians, most of whom were friendly. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Smith to
Robertson, June 19, 1793, etc.; _Knoxville Gazette_, June 15 and July
13, 1793, etc.] The Indians clamored for justice and the surrender of
the militia who had attacked them. Blount warmly sympathized with them,
but when he summoned a court-martial to try Beard it promptly acquitted
him, and the general frontier feeling was strongly in his favor. Other
militia commanders followed his example. Again and again they trailed
the war parties, laden with scalps and plunder, and attacked the towns
to which they went; killing the warriors and capturing squaws and
children. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, July 13, July 27, 1793, etc.,
etc.]
Revengeful Forays.
The following January another party of red marauders was tracked by a
band of riflemen to Scolacutta's camp. The militia promptly fell on the
camp and killed several Indians, both the hostile and the friendly.
Other Cherokee towns were attacked and partially destroyed. In but one
instance were the whites beaten off. When once the whites fairly began
to make retaliatory inroads they troubled themselves but little as to
whether the Indians they assailed were or were not those who had wronged
them. In one case, four frontiersmen dressed and painted themselves like
Indians prior to starting on a foray to avenge the murder of a neighbor.
They could not find the trail of the murderers, and so went at random to
a Cherokee town, killed four warriors who were asleep on the ground, and
returned to the settlements. Scolacutta at first was very angry with
Blount, and taunted him with his inability to punish the whites, asserting
that the frontiersmen were "making fun" of their well-meaning governor;
but the old chief soon made up his mind that as long as he allowed the
war parties to go through his towns he would have to expect to suffer
at the hands of the injured settlers. He wrote to Blount enumerating
the different murders that had been committed by both sides, and stating
that his people were willing to let the misdeeds stand as off-setting
one another. He closed his letter by stating that the Upper Towns were
for peace, and added: "I want my mate, General Sevier, to see my talk ...
We have often told lies, but now you may depend on hearing the truth,"
which was a refreshingly frank admission. [Footnote: American State
Papers, iv., pp. 459, 460, etc.; _Knoxville Gazette_, Jan. 16, and
June 5, 1794.]
Sevier Takes Command.
He makes a Brilliant Raid.
When, towards the close of 1792, the ravages became very serious,
Sevier, the man whom the Indians feared more than any other, was called
to take command of the militia. For a year he confined himself to acting
on the defensive, and even thus he was able to give much protection to
the settlements. In September, 1793, however, several hundred Indians,
mostly Cherokees, crossed the Tennessee not thirty miles from Knoxville.
They attacked a small station, within which there were but thirteen
souls, who, after some resistance, surrendered on condition that their
lives should be spared; but they were butchered with obscene cruelty.
Sevier immediately marched toward the assailants, who fled back to the
Cherokee towns. Thither Sevier followed them, and went entirely through
the Cherokee country to the land of the Creeks, burning the towns and
destroying the stores of provisions. He marched with his usual quickness,
and the Indians were never able to get together in sufficient numbers to
oppose him. When he crossed High Tower River there was a skirmish, but
he soon routed the Indians, killing several of their warriors, and losing
himself but three men killed and three wounded. He utterly destroyed a
hostile Creek town, the chief of which was named Buffalo Horn. He
returned late in October, and after his return the frontiers of Eastern
Tennessee had a respite from the Indian ravages. Yet Congress refused
to pay his militia for the time they were out, because they had invaded
the Indian country instead of acting on the defensive. [Footnote:
Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Oct. 29, 1793; _Knoxville Gazette_,
Oct. 12, and Nov. 23, 1793.]
Destruction of Nickajack and Running Water.
To chastise the Upper Cherokee Towns gave relief to the settlements on
the Holston, but the chief sinners were the Chickamaugas of the Lower
Cherokee towns, and the chief sufferers were the Cumberland settlers.
The Cumberland people were irritated beyond endurance, alike by the
ravages of these Indians and by the conduct of the United States in
forbidding them to retaliate. In September, 1794, they acted for
themselves. Early in the month Robertson received certain information
that a large body of Creeks and Lower Cherokees had gathered at the
towns and were preparing to invade the Cumberland settlements. The best
way to meet them was by a stroke in advance, and he determined to send
an expedition against them in their strongholds. There was no question
whatever as to the hostility of the Indians, for at this very time
settlers were being killed by war parties throughout the Cumberland
country. Some Kentuckians, under Colonel Whitley, had joined the
Tennesseeans, who were nominally led by a Major Ore; but various
frontier fighters, including Kaspar Mansker, were really as much in
command as was Ore. Over five hundred mounted riflemen, bold of heart
and strong of hand, marched toward the Chickamauga towns, which contained
some three hundred warriors. When they came to the Tennessee they spent
the entire night in ferrying the arms across and swimming the horses;
they used bundles of dry cane for rafts, and made four "bull-boats" out
of the hides of steers. They passed over unobserved and fell on the towns
of Nickajack and Running Water, taking the Indians completely by surprise;
they killed fifty-five warriors and captured nineteen squaws and children.
In the entire expedition but one white man was killed and three wounded.
[Footnote: Robertson MSS., Robertson to Blount, Oct. 8, 1794; Blount to
Robertson, Oct. 1, 1794, Sept. 9, 1794 (in which Blount expresses the
utmost disapproval of Robertson's conduct, and says he will not send on
Robertson's original letter to Philadelphia, for fear it will get him
into a scrape; and requests him to send a formal report which can be
forwarded); _Knoxville Gazette_, Sept. 26, 1794; Brown's Narrative.]
This Brings the Cherokees to Terms.
Not only the Federal authorities, but Blount himself, very much
disapproved of this expedition; nevertheless, it was right and proper,
and produced excellent effects. In no other way could the hostile towns
have been brought to reason. It was followed by a general conference
with the Cherokees at Tellico Blockhouse. Scolacutta appeared for the
Upper, and Watts for the Lower Cherokee Towns. Watts admitted that "for
their folly" the Lower Cherokees had hitherto refused to make peace, and
remarked frankly, "I do not say they did not deserve the chastisement
they received." Scolacutta stated that he could not sympathize much with
the Lower Towns, saying, "their own conduct brought destruction upon
them. The trails of murderers and thieves was followed to those towns
... Their bad conduct drew the white people on me, who injured me nearly
unto death.... All last winter I was compelled to lay in the woods by
the bad conduct of my own people drawing war on me." At last the
Cherokees seemed sincere in their desire for peace. [Footnote: Robertson
MSS., Blount's Minutes of Conference held with Cherokees, Nov. 7 and 8,
1794, at Tellico Blockhouse.]
Cherokees and Chikasaws Restrain Creeks.
These counter-attacks served a double purpose. They awed the hostile
Cherokees; and they forced the friendly Cherokees, for the sake of their
own safety, actively to interfere against the bands of hostile Creeks. A
Cherokee chief, The Stallion, and a number of warriors, joined with the
Federal soldiers and Tennessee militia in repulsing the Creek war
parties. They acted under Blount's directions, and put a complete stop
to the passage of hostile Indians through their towns. [Footnote:
Robertson MSS., Ecooe to John McKee, Tellico, Feb. 1, 1795, etc.] The
Chickasaws also had become embroiled with the Creeks. [Footnote: Blount
MSS., James Colbert to Robertson, Feb. 10, 1792.] For over three years
they carried on an intermittent warfare with them, and were heartily
supported by the frontiersmen, who were prompt to recognize the value of
their services. At the same time the hostile Indians were much cowed at
the news of Wayne's victory in the North.
Treachery of the United States Government to the Chickasaws.
The Frontiersmen Stand by Chickasaws.
All these causes combined to make the Creeks sue for peace. To its shame
and discredit the United States Government at first proposed to repeat
towards the Chickasaws the treachery of which the British had just been
guilty to the Northern Indians; for it refused to defend them from the
Creeks, against whom they had been acting, partly, it is true, for their
own ends, but partly in the interest of the settlers. The frontiersmen,
however, took a much more just and generous view of the affair. Mansker
and a number of the best fighters in the Cumberland district marched to
the assistance of the Chickasaws; and the frontier militia generally
showed grateful appreciation of the way both the Upper Cherokees and the
Chickasaws helped them put a stop to the hostilities of the Chickamaugas
and Creeks. Robertson got the Choctaws to interfere on behalf of the
Chickasaws and to threaten war with the Creeks if the latter persisted
in their hostilities. Moreover, the United States agents, when the
treaty was actually made, behaved better than their superiors had
promised, for they persuaded the Creeks to declare peace with the
Chickasaws as well as with the whites. [Footnote: Robertson MSS.,
Robertson to Blount, Jan. 13, 1795; Blount to Robertson, Jan. 20, 1795,
and April 26, 1795; Robertson to Blount, April 20, 1795; _Knoxville
Gazette_, Aug. 25, 1792, Oct. 12, 1793, June 19, 1794, July 17, Aug. 4
and Aug. 15, 1794; American State Papers, pp. 284, 285, etc., etc.] Many
of the peaceful Creeks had become so alarmed at the outlook that they
began to exert pressure on their warlike brethren; and at last the
hostile element yielded, though not until bitter feeling had arisen
between the factions. The fact was, that the Creeks were divided much as
they were twenty years later, when the Red Sticks went to war under the
inspiration of the Prophet; and it would have been well if Wayne had
been sent South, to invade their country and anticipate by twenty years
Jackson's feats. But the nation was not yet ready for such strong
measures. The Creeks were met half way in their desire for peace; and
the entire tribe concluded a treaty the provisions of which were
substantially those of the treaty of New York. They ceased all
hostilities, together with the Cherokees.
Fatuity of Timothy Pickering.
The concluding stage of the negotiations was marked by an incident which
plainly betrayed the faulty attitude of the National Government towards
Southwestern frontiersmen. With incredible folly, Timothy Pickering, at
this time Secretary of War, blindly refused to see the necessity of what
had been done by Blount and the Tennessee frontiersmen. In behalf of the
administration he wrote a letter to Blount which was as offensive as it
was fatuous. In it he actually blamed Blount for getting the Cherokees
and Chickasaws to help protect the frontier against the hostile Indians.
He forbade him to give any assistance to the Chickasaws. He announced
that he disapproved of The Stallion's deeds, and that the Cherokees must
not destroy Creeks passing through their country on the way to the
frontier. He even intimated that the surrender of The Stallion to the
Creeks would be a good thing. As for protecting the frontier from the
ravages of the Creeks, he merely vouchsafed the statement that he would
instruct Seagrove to make "some pointed declarations" to the Creeks on
the subject! He explained that the United States Government was resolved
not to have a direct or indirect war with the Creeks; and he closed by
reiterating, with futile insistency, that the instruction to the
Cherokees not to permit Creek war parties against the whites to come
through their country, did not warrant their using force to stop them.
[Footnote: Robertson MSS., Pickering to Blount, March 23, 1795.] He
failed to point out how it was possible, without force, to carry out
these instructions.
A more shameful letter was never written, and it was sufficient of
itself to show Pickering's conspicuous incapacity for the position he
held. The trouble was that he represented not very unfairly the
sentiment of a large portion of the Eastern, and especially the
Northeastern, people. When Blount visited Philadelphia in the summer of
1793 to urge a vigorous national war as the only thing which could bring
the Indians to behave themselves, [Footnote: Blount MSS., Blount to
Smith, June 17, 1793.] he reported that Washington had an entirely just
idea of the whole Indian business, but that Congress generally knew
little of the matter and was not disposed to act. [Footnote: Robertson
MSS., Blount to gentleman in Cumberland, Philadelphia, Aug. 28, 1793.]
His report was correct; and he might have added that the congressmen
were no more ignorant, and no more reluctant to do right, than their
constituents.
Misconduct of the Federal Government.
The truth is that the United States Government during the six years from
1791 to 1796 behaved shamefully to the people who were settled along the
Cumberland and Holston. This was the more inexcusable in view of the
fact that, thanks to the example of Blount, Sevier, and Robertson, the
Tennesseeans, alone among the frontiersmen, showed an intelligent
appreciation of the benefits of the Union and a readiness to render it
loyal support. The Kentuckians acted far less rationally; yet the
Government tolerated much misconduct on their part, and largely for
their benefit carried on a great national war against the Northwestern
Indians. In the Southwest almost all that the Administration did was to
prohibit the frontiersmen from protecting themselves. Peace was finally
brought about largely through the effect of Wayne's victory, and the
knowledge of the Creeks that they would have to stand alone in any
further warfare; but it would not have been obtained at all if Sevier
and the other frontier leaders had not carried on their destructive
counter-inroads into the Cherokee and Upper Creek country, and if under
Robertson's orders Nickajack and Running Water had not been destroyed;
while the support of the Chickasaws and friendly Cherokees in stopping
the Creek war parties was essential. The Southwesterners owed thanks to
General Wayne and his army and to their own strong right hands; but they
had small cause for gratitude to the Federal Government. They owed still
less to the Northeasterners, or indeed to any of the men of the eastern
seaboard; the benefits arising from Pinckney's treaty form the only
exception. This neglect brought its own punishment. Blount and Sevier
were naturally inclined to Federalism, and it was probably only the
supineness of the Federal Government in failing to support the
Southwesterners against the Indians which threw Tennessee, when it
became a State, into the arms of the Democratic party.
Peace.
However, peace was finally wrung from the Indians, and by the beginning
of 1796 the outrages ceased. The frontiers, north and south alike,
enjoyed a respite from Indian warfare for the first time in a
generation; nor was the peace interrupted until fifteen years
afterwards.
Growth of Tennessee.
Throngs of emigrants had come into Tennessee. A wagon road had been
chopped to the Cumberland District, and as the Indians gradually ceased
their ravages, the settlements about Nashville began to grow as rapidly
as the settlements along the Holston. In 1796 the required limit of
population had been reached, and Tennessee with over seventy-six
thousand inhabitants was formally admitted as a State of the Federal
Union; Sevier was elected Governor, Blount was made one of the Senators,
and Andrew Jackson was chosen Representative in Congress.
The Tennessee Constitution.
In their State Constitution the hard-working backwoods farmers showed a
conservative spirit which would seem strange to the radical democracy of
new Western States to-day. An elective Governor and two legislative
houses were provided; and the representation was proportioned, not to
the population at large, but to the citizen who paid taxes; for persons
with some little property were still considered to be the rightful
depositaries of political power. The Constitution established freedom of
the press, and complete religious liberty--a liberty then denied in the
parent State of North Carolina; but it contained some unwise and unjust
provisions. The Judges were appointed by the Legislature, and were
completely subservient to it; and, through the influence of the land
speculators all lands except town lots were taxed alike, so that the men
who had obtained possession of the best tracts shifted to other
shoulders much of their own proper burden. [Footnote: "Constitutional
History of Tennessee," by Joshua W. Caldwell, p. 101, another of Robert
Clark's publications; an admirable study of institutional development in
Tennessee.]