2i 8 The Winning of the West 



and helped to save his life; moreover, the Chero- 

 kees knew him, trusted his word, and were probably 

 a little overawed by a certain air of command to 

 which all men that were thrown in contact with him 

 bore witness. His ready tact and knowledge of In- 

 dian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs 

 and warriors to meet him in council, assured them 

 of the anger and sorrow with which all the Wa- 

 tauga people viewed the murder, which had un- 

 doubtedly been committed by some outsider, and 

 wound up by declaring his determination to try to 

 have the wrong-doer arrested and punished accord- 

 ing to his crime. The Indians, already pleased with 

 his embassy, finally consented to pass the affair 

 over and not take vengeance upon innocent men. 

 Then the daring backwoods diplomatist, well 

 pleased with the success of his mission, returned to 

 the anxious little community. 



The incident, taken in connection with the plun- 

 dering of a store kept by two whites in Holston Val- 

 ley at the same time, and the unprovoked assault 

 on Boone's party in Powell's Valley a year later, 

 shows the extreme difficulty of preventing the worst 

 men of each color from wantonly attacking the 

 innocent. There was hardly a peaceable red or law- 

 abiding white who could not recite injuries he had 

 received from members of the opposite race; and 

 his sense of the wrongs he had suffered, as well as 

 the general frontier indifference to crimes com- 

 mitted against others, made him slow in punishing 

 similar outrages by his own people. The Watauga 



