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.
It was the last day of the convocation, and it had been arranged that a great foot-race should take place on the open ground near the river, between the younger braves and the young men of the settlement. The race was in full progress, and among the younger men all was mirth, hilarity, and good-natured emulation, while even the older chiefs, catching the spirit of the occasion, had relaxed from their habitual gravity and were cheering on the contestants, when suddenly a musket-shot echoed over the grounds, and one of the young Indians—a near kinsman of a chief—fell in his tracks lifeless. The smoke came from the woods near the race-ground, and pursuit failed to discover the assassin, but he was evidently a white man.
It was as if the shot had been fired into a magazine of gunpowder. The Indians had come without arms, or there might have followed a bloody tragedy. As it was, they gathered their blankets about them, and, with threatening gestures and faces presaging a terrible revenge, silently stole away into the forest.
It was afterward learned that the murderer was a man named Crabtree, from the Wolf Hills, now Abingdon, in Virginia. A brother of his had been killed by the Shawnees a short time before while exploring with Boone in Kentucky, and, lurking in the woods near by, he had taken this inopportune time to wreak a bloody revenge.
The Indians had left hastily, giving no time for explanation or parley. Revenge—blood for blood—was the cardinal doctrine of their theology, and, unless something were done to avert it, war, bloody and exterminating, would soon be upon the white settlers.
But what could be done? To flee the country was only to invite pursuit; to remain would be to invite a conflict with three thousand infuriated savages. Hastily they gathered in council; and then it was that Robertson volunteered, like Curtius, to ride into the breach,—at the peril of his life to visit and endeavor to pacify the Indians. It was a journey of a hundred and fifty miles through an unbroken forest, and death might lurk behind every bush and tree on the way; but what was one life perilled to save perhaps five hundred? Thus Robertson reasoned with his friends and neighbors, and then, mounting his horse and giving a parting kiss to his wife and child, he rode off into the wilderness.
EDMUND KIRKE.
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