Unfortunately, the Indian agent was right.  Virginia had left her exposed citizens to the tender mercy of the Cherokees by admitting that they had settled upon Indian territory.  By a treaty made with the tribe only a short time before, the State had acknowledged the Cherokee title to the entire region lying south of a line running due west from the White-Top Mountain.  It was idle for the white settlers to say that the Six Nations, who had been the original owners of the soil, had in 1768 transferred it to the government by treaty, and that the Cherokees had never before claimed any right to it but as a hunting-ground.  The parent colony had acknowledged in the Cherokees a right to the soil, and hence, as the settlers were south of the treaty-line, had made them trespassers upon the Cherokee territory.  It was an unfortunate and dangerous position; but Robertson and Sevier were not disposed to purchase security by bribery.  They spurned the overtures of the British agent, and decided to negotiate directly with the Indians.

Some of the visiting Indians expressed a desire that the order of the British agent should not be enforced; others were willing that the settlers should remain, provided they made no further encroachments.  But Robertson and Sevier were not willing to occupy their homes by any title so precarious as the word of a few Indian warriors.  They determined, while they ignored the British agent, to recognize the Indian title, but to treat for their lands with the whole Cherokee nation.  Accordingly, they requested the visiting chiefs to call together the head-men of the tribe in a friendly council at the “Watauga Old Fields.”

They came at the appointed time,—­six hundred half-naked red men, clad in buckskin leggings and hunting—­shirts and head-dress of turkey-feathers, and all the male settlers, now nearly a hundred, together with all the women and children in the near-by plantations, assembled to receive them.  Robertson, from his “winning ways,” had been appointed master of ceremonies, and he resorted to every device to placate and amuse the savage gentlemen.  Dances, ball-plays, and foot-races were improvised, in which the young men of both races joined in good-natured rivalry; but, while attending to the festivities, Robertson did not forget the real object of the gathering.  For the consideration of five thousand dollars, to be paid in powder, lead, muskets, and other goods of value to the Indians, he obtained from them a ten years’ lease of all the lands on the Watauga and tributary streams.  This lease was executed by the head-king, Oconostota, and other leading men of the tribe, and it was supposed that it would remove for a long time to come all difficulty with the Cherokees.  But this dream was only the next day rudely dispelled by a most unfortunate occurrence.