Franklin and Georgia.

Georgia, on the contrary, showed the utmost friendliness towards the new state, and gladly entered into an alliance with her. [Footnote:  Stevens’ “Georgia,” II., 380.] Georgia had no self-assertive communities of her own children on her western border, as Virginia and North Carolina had, in Kentucky and Franklin.  She was herself a frontier commonwealth, challenging as her own lands that were occupied by the Indians and claimed by the Spainards.  Her interests were identical with those of Franklin.  The Governors of the two communities exchanged complimentary addresses, and sent their rough ambassadors one to the other.  Georgia made Sevier a brigadier-general in her militia, for the district she claimed in the bend of the Tennessee; and her branch of the Society of the Cincinnati elected him to membership.  In return Sevier, hoping to tighten the loosening bonds of his authority by a successful Indian war, entered into arrangements with Georgia for a combined campaign against the Creeks.  For various reasons the proposed campaign fell through, but the mere planning of it shows the feeling that was, at the bottom, the strongest of those which knit together the Franklin men and the Georgians. [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS., No. 125, p. 163.] They both greedily coveted the Indians’ land, and were bent on driving the Indians off it. [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, IV., pp. 256, 353.  Many of the rumors of defeats and victories given in these papers were without foundation.]

    The Franklin Men and the Indians.

One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for the independence of his state to the Governor of North Carolina, expressed with unusual frankness the attitude of the Holston backwoodsmen towards the Indians.  He remarked that he supposed the Governor would be astonished to learn that there were many settlers on the land which North Carolina had by treaty guaranteed to the Cherokees; and brushed aside all remonstrances by simply saying that it was vain to talk of keeping the frontiersmen from encroaching on Indian territory.  All that could be done, he said, was to extend the laws over each locality as rapidly as it was settled by the intruding pioneers; otherwise they would become utterly lawless, and dangerous to their neighbors.  As for laws and proclamations to restrain the white advance, he asked if all the settlements in America had not been extended in defiance of such.  And now that the Indians were cowed, the advance was certain to be faster, and the savages were certain to be pushed back more rapidly, and the limits of tribal territory more narrowly circumscribed. [Footnote:  Ramsey, 350.]

This letter possessed at least the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians.  They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands.  They preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if this proved impossible, then they intended to gain them by force.