the treaty, yet that the Cherokees had done more damage, especially in the way of horse stealing, since the treaty was signed than ever before, and that it was not possible to say what the frontier inhabitants might be provoked to do.  He continued:  “While a part, and that the ostensible ruling part, of a nation affect to be at, and I believe really are for, peace, and the more active young men are frequently killing people and stealing horses, it is extremely difficult to know how to act.  The people, even the most exposed, would prefer an open war to such a situation.  The reason is obvious.  A man would then know when he saw an Indian he saw an enemy, and would be prepared and act accordingly.” [Footnote:  American State Papers, Pickens to Blount, Hopewell, April 28, 1792.]

    The Georgia Frontier.

The people of Tennessee were the wronged, and not the wrongdoers, and it was upon them that the heaviest strokes of the Indians fell.  The Georgia frontiers were also harried continually, although much less severely; but the Georgians were themselves far from blameless.  Georgia was the youngest, weakest, and most lawless of the original thirteen States, and on the whole her dealings with the Indians were far from creditable, More than once she inflicted shameful wrong on the Cherokees.  The Creeks, however, generally wronged her more than she wronged them, and at this particular period even the Georgia frontiersmen were much less to blame than were their Indian foes.  By fair treaty the Indians had agreed to cede to the whites lands upon which they now refused to allow them to settle.  They continually plundered and murdered the outlying Georgia settlers; and the militia, in their retaliatory expeditions, having no knowledge of who the murderers actually were, quite as often killed the innocent as the guilty.  One of the complaints of the Indians was that the Georgians came in parties to hunt on the neutral ground, and slew quantities of deer and turkeys by fire hunting at night and by still hunting with the rifle in the daytime, while they killed many bears by the aid of their “great gangs of dogs.” [Footnote:  American State Papers, Timothy Barnard to James Seagrove, March 26, 1793.] This could hardly be called a legitimate objection on the part of the Creeks, however, for their own hunting parties ranged freely through the lands they had ceded to the whites and killed game wherever they could find it.

Evil and fearful deeds were done by both sides.  Peaceful Indians, even envoys, going to the treaty grounds were slain in cold blood; and all that the Georgians could allege by way of offset was that the savages themselves had killed many peaceful whites.

    Brutal Nature of the Contest in Georgia.