Robertson Wounded.

In the following year, 1789, Robertson himself had a narrow escape.  He was at work with some of his field hands in a clearing.  One man was on guard and became alarmed at some sound; Robertson snatched up his gun, and, while he was peering into the woods, the Indians fired on him.  He ran toward the station and escaped, but only at the cost of a bullet through the foot.  Immediately sixty mounted riflemen gathered at Robertson’s station, and set out after the fleeing Indians; but finding that in the thick wood they did not gain on their foes, and were hampered by their horses, twenty picked men were sent ahead.  Among these twenty men was fierce, moody young Andrew Jackson.  They found the Indians in camp, at daybreak, but fired from too great a distance; they killed one, wounded others, and scattered the rest, who left sixteen guns behind them in their flight. [Footnote:  Haywood, 244.]

    Wrongs Committed by Both Sides.

During these two years many people were killed, both in the settlements, on the trail through the woods, and on the Tennessee River, as they drifted down-stream in their boats.  As always in these contests the innocent suffered with the guilty.  The hideous border ruffians, the brutal men who murdered peaceful Indians in times of truce and butchered squaws and children in time of war, fared no worse than unoffending settlers or men of mark who had been staunch friends of the Indian peoples.  The Legislatures of the seaboard States, and Congress itself, passed laws to punish men who committed outrages on the Indians, but they could not be executed.  Often the border people themselves interfered to prevent such outrages, or expressed disapproval of them, and rescued the victims; but they never visited the criminals with the stern and ruthless punishment which alone would have availed to check the crimes.  For this failure they must receive hearty condemnation, and be adjudged to have forfeited much of the respect to which they were otherwise entitled by their strong traits, and their deeds of daring.  In the same way, but to an even greater degree, the peaceful Indians always failed to punish or restrain their brethren who were bent on murder and plunder; and the braves who went on the warpath made no discrimination between good and bad, strong and weak, man and woman, young and old.

One of the sufferers was General Joseph Martin, who had always been a firm friend of the red race, and had earnestly striven to secure justice for them. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Indian Affairs, vol. i.  Martin to Knox, Jan. 15, 1789.] He had gone for a few days to his plantation on the borders of Georgia, and during his visit the place was attacked by a Creek war party.  They drove away his horses and wounded his overseer; but he managed to get into his house and stood at bay, shooting one warrior and beating off the others.

    Attack on an Emigrant Boat.