Nor would the chief Dragging Canoe accept peace at all; but gathering round him the fiercest and most unruly of the young men, he left the rest of the tribe and retired to the Chickamauga fastnesses.

When the preliminary truce had been made Christian marched his forces homeward, and disbanded them a fortnight before Christmas, leaving a garrison at Holston, Great Island.  During the ensuing spring and summer peace treaties were definitely concluded between the Upper Cherokees and Virginia and North Carolina at the Great Island of the Holston,[78] and between the Lower Cherokees and South Carolina and Georgia at De Witt’s Corners.  The Cherokees gave up some of their lands; of the four seacoast provinces South Carolina gained most, as was proper, for she had done and suffered most.[79]

The Watauga people and the westerners generally were the real gainers by the war.  Had the Watauga settlements been destroyed, they would no longer have covered the Wilderness Road to Kentucky; and so Kentucky must perforce have been abandoned.  But the followers of Robertson and Sevier stood stoutly for their homes; not one of them fled over the mountains.  The Cherokees had been so roughly handled that for several years they did not again go to war as a body; and this not only gave the settlers a breathing time, but also enabled them to make themselves so strong that when the struggle was renewed they could easily hold their own.  The war was thus another and important link in the chain of events by which the west was won; and had any link in the chain snapped during these early years, the peace of 1783 would probably have seen the trans-Alleghany country in the hands of a non-American power.

1.  Mr. Phelan, in his “History of Tennessee,” deserves especial praise for having so clearly understood the part played by the Scotch-Irish.

2.  The Campbell MSS. contain allusions to various such feuds, and accounts of the jealousies existing not only between families, but between prominent members of the same family.

3.  See Milfort, Smyth, etc., as well as the native writers.

4.  Executions for “treason,” murder, and horse-stealing were very common.  For an instance where the three crimes were treated alike as deserving the death penalty the perpetrators being hung, see Calendar of Virginia State Papers, Vol.  III., p. 361.

5.  “American Archives,” 4th Series, Vol.  VI., p. 541.  But parties of young braves went on the war-path from time to time.

6. Do., Vol III., p. 790.

7. Do., Vol.  VI., p. 1228.

8.  See Milfort, pp. 46, 134, etc.

9.  “American Archives,” 4th Series, Vol.  I., p. 1094, for example of fight between Choctaws and Creeks.

10. Do., Vol.  IV., p. 317.  Letter of Agent John Stuart to General Gage, St. Augustine, Oct. 3, 1775.

11.  State Department MSS.  No. 71, Vol.  II., p. 189.  Letter of David Taitt, Deputy Superintendent (of British) in Creek Nation.