These frontier leaders were generally very jealous of one another.  The ordinary backwoodsmen vied together as hunters, axemen, or wrestlers; as they rose to leadership their rivalries grew likewise, and the more ambitious, who desired to become the civil and military chiefs of the community, were sure to find their interests clash.  Thus old Evan Shelby distrusted Sevier; Arthur Campbell was jealous of both Sevier and Isaac Shelby; and the two latter bore similar feelings to William Campbell.  When a great crisis occurred all these petty envies were sunk; the nobler natures of the men came uppermost; and they joined with unselfish courage, heart and hand, to defend their country in the hour of her extreme need.  But when the danger was over the old jealousies cropped out again.

Some one or other of the leaders was almost always employed against the Indians.  The Cherokees and Creeks were never absolutely quiet and at peace.

    Indian Troubles.

After the chastisement inflicted upon the former by the united forces of all the southern backwoodsmen, treaties were held with them, [Footnote:  See ante, Chapter XI. of Vol.  I.] in the spring and summer of 1777.  The negotiations consumed much time, the delegates from both sides meeting again and again to complete the preliminaries.  The credit of the State being low, Isaac Shelby furnished on his own responsibility the goods and provisions needed by the Virginians and Holston people in coming to an agreement with the Otari, or upper Cherokees [ Footnote:  Shelby’s MS. autobiography, copy in Col.  Durrett’s library.]; and some land was formally ceded to the whites.

But the chief Dragging Canoe would not make peace.  Gathering the boldest and most turbulent of the young braves about him, he withdrew to the great whirl in the Tennessee, [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, III., 271; the settlers always spoke of it as the “suck” or “whirl.”] at the crossing-place of the Creek war parties, when they followed the trail that led to the bend of the Cumberland River.  Here he was joined by many Creeks, and also by adventurous and unruly members from almost all the western tribes [Footnote:  Shelby MS.]—­Chickasaws, Chocktaws, and Indians from the Ohio.  He soon had a great band of red outlaws round him.  These freebooters were generally known as the Chickamaugas, and they were the most dangerous and least controllable of all the foes who menaced the western settlements.  Many tories and white refugees from border justice joined them, and shared in their misdeeds.  Their shifting villages stretched from Chickamauga Creek to Running Water.  Between these places the Tennessee twists down through the sombre gorges by which the chains of the Cumberland ranges are riven in sunder.  Some miles below Chickamauga Creek, near Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain towers aloft into the clouds; at its base the river bends round Moccasin Point, and then rushes through a gap between Walden’s Ridge