Sevier quickly replied:
“I will keep the promises I make in the grand council I am asking you to come to. The Watauga settlements are to become a separate fire and blaze beside the thirteen.”
Unable to restrain his fierce passions longer, Watts leaped to his feet and cried:
“Why should we wait longer to have promises kept? Why should we believe new promises will be remembered better than the old? What power has Little John to make the settlers keep off our lands? Even now the settlements do not know where they belong. North Carolina does not want them. The Great Council of America has not taken them in. Who, then, is to see that the promises are kept?
“Ku! Spain tells these settlers they must not travel on the Mississippi, and the river is closed except to the friends of Spain. Little John is a brave man, but he can not shoot his rifle across the big water. Spain speaks, and her voice comes across the water, and she is obeyed. Let us go to no grand council until the whites have left our lands.” Then whirling on Sevier he cried, “I have said you are a brave man. I meant the days when we fought each other on the border. I do not mean now—today. For you have sneaked through the woods and kept from sight until safe in a peace town. You would talk soft if you were in Little Talassee, face to face with McGillivray.”
Sevier knew Watts was trying to drive him into the wilderness where the paths were red, and he accepted the challenge by retorting:
“I will go to Little Talassee. I will speak face to face with McGillivray, and, after I have finished, go and ask him if I spoke soft.” Turning to Old Tassel he demanded, “What do you say to my talk? Will you come to a grand council on the French Broad or on the Holston after I have returned from McGillivray’s town?”
Old Tassel, beset by his desire for peace, yet feeling the surge of his warriors’ will for fighting, now found a loophole. He gravely replied—
“When you come back from carrying your talk to McGillivray, I will go to a grand council on the French Broad.”
“You have given your promise in the council-house of a peace town. It is to be so,” said Sevier, picking up his rifle and preparing to go.