already settled.  The Cumberland district had already been granted over and over again by the Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the North Carolinians and to the United States.  The Creeks in particular never had had any claim to this Cumberland country, which was a hundred miles and over from any of their towns.  All the use they had ever made of it was to visit it with their hunting parties, as did the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Shawnees, Delawares, and many others.  Yet the Creeks and other Indians had the effrontery afterwards to assert that the Cumberland Country had never been ceded at all, and that as the settlers in it were thus outside of the territory properly belonging to the United States, they were not entitled to protection under the treaty entered into with the latter.

    Blount’s Good Faith with the Indians.

Blount was vigilant and active in seeing that none of the frontiersmen trespassed on the Indian lands, and when a party of men, claiming authority under Georgia, started to settle at the Muscle Shoals, he co-operated actively with the Indians in having them brought back, and did his best, though in vain, to persuade the Grand Jury to indict the offenders. [Footnote:  Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 3, 1791.] He was explicit in his orders to Sevier, to Robertson, and to District Attorney Jackson that they should promptly punish any white man who violated the provisions of the treaty; and over a year after it had been entered into he was able to write in explicit terms that “not a single settler had built a house, or made a settlement of any kind, on the Cherokee lands, and that no Indians had been killed by the whites excepting in defence of their lives and property.” [Footnote:  Do., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 2, 1792; to Bloody Fellow, Sept. 13, 1792.] Robertson heartily co-operated with Blount, as did Sevier, in the effort to keep peace, Robertson showing much good sense and self-control, and acquiescing in Blount’s desire that nothing should be done “inconsistent with the good of the nation as a whole,” and that “the faith of the nation should be kept.” [Footnote:  Blount MSS., Robertson to Blount, Jan. 17, 1793.]

    Bad Faith of the Indians.

The Indians as a body showed no appreciation whatever of these efforts to keep the peace, and plundered and murdered quite as freely as before the treaties, or as when the whites themselves were the aggressors.  The Creek Confederacy was in a condition of utter disorganization, McGillivray’s authority was repudiated, and most of the towns scornfully refused to obey the treaty into which their representatives had entered at New York.  A tory adventurer named Bowles, who claimed to have the backing of the English Government, landed in the nation and set himself in opposition to McGillivray.  The latter, who was no fighter, and whose tools were treachery and craft, fled to the protection of the Spaniards.  Bowles, among other feats, plundered the stores of Panton, a white trader in the Spanish interest, and for a moment his authority seemed supreme; but the Spaniards, by a trick, got possession of him and put him in prison.