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.59 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 in 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.
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 Governmen 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 block-houses 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 traveled hither and thither through the woods and continually harried the war parties.60 The militia hands also traveled 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.61
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 to act accordingly.”62
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.”63 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. 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.64
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.65 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 sum
mer 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.66
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 blamable 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.67 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 was much put out at the fact that Sea-grove 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.”68 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.69
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 doing so, in the room of fifteen hundred dollars to keep the peace.”70 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.
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.71
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.72 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 effectiv
ely.73
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.74
The Winning of the West Page 107