Conferences were thereupon held with them, lasting several days, at which the Indians detailed at great length their grievances and made known their wants.
Causes of complaint.—The substance of their communications was to the effect that when they were summoned by Governor Blount to the conference which resulted in the treaty of July 2, 1791, they were unaware of any purpose on the part of the Government to secure any further cession of land from them; that they had protested vigorously and consistently for several days against yielding any more territory, but were met with such persistent and threatening demands from Governor Blount on the subject that they were forced to yield; that they had no confidence that the North Carolinians would attach any sacredness to the new boundary, in fact they were already settling beyond it; and that the annuity stipulated in the treaty of 1791, as compensation for the cession, was entirely inadequate. They therefore asked an increase of the annuity from $1,000 to $1,500, and furthermore demanded that the white people who had settled south of the ridge dividing the waters of Little River from those of the Tennessee should be removed, and that such ridge should be the barrier.
President Washington, believing their demand to be a just one, and also desiring that the delegation should carry home a favorable report of the attitude and disposition of the Government toward them, submitted the matter to the Senate[90] and requested the advice of that body as to the propriety of attaching an additional article to the treaty of 1791 which should increase the annuity from $1,000 to $1,500.
Annuity increased.—To this proposition the Senate gave its advice and consent,[91] and what is mentioned in the United States Statutes at Large as a treaty concluded and proclaimed February 17, 1792,[92] became the law of the land.
WAR WITH CHEROKEES.
This concession did not, however, in any large degree heal the differences and antagonisms existing between the Indians and the border settlers, with whom they were brought in constant contact. Even while the treaty of 1792 was being negotiated by the representatives of the Cherokees at the capital of the nation, a portion of their young warriors were consummating arrangements for the precipitation of a general war with the whites, and in September, 1792, a party of upwards of 700 Cherokee and Creek warriors attacked Buchanan's Station, Tenn., within 4 miles of Nashville. They were headed by the Cherokee chief John Watts, who was one of the signers of the treaty of Holston, and had he not been severely wounded early in the attack, it is likely the station would have been destroyed.[93]
A year later, between twelve and fifteen hundred Indians of the same tribes invaded the settlements on the Holston River and destroyed Cavitt's Station, 7 miles below Knoxville.[94] In fact, the intermediate periods between 1791 and 1795 were filled up by the incursions of smaller war parties, and it was not until the latter year that the frontiers found any repose from Indian depredations.
The general tranquillity enjoyed after that date seems to have been occasioned by the wholesome discipline administered to the tribes northwest of the Ohio by General Wayne, in his victory of August 20, 1794, and as a result of the expedition of Major Ore, with his command of Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, in September of the same year, against the Lower Towns of the Cherokees, wherein two of those towns, Running Water and Nickajack, were destroyed.[95]