The War in the Northwest 273 



bear arms the whole time, not only because of the 

 Indian warfare, but also on account of the inveterate 

 hatred and constant collisions between the whigs 

 and the loyalists. Many dark deeds were done, and 

 though the tories, with whom the criminal classes 

 were in close alliance, were generally the first and 

 chief offenders, yet the patriots can not be held guilt- 

 less of murderous and ferocious reprisals. They often 

 completely failed to distinguish between the offend- 

 ers against civil order, and those whose only crime 

 was an honest, if mistaken, devotion to the cause of 

 the king. 



Early in '78 a land office was opened in the Hol- 

 ston settlements, and the settlers were required to 

 make entries according to the North Carolina land 

 laws. Hitherto they had lived on their clearings un- 

 disturbed, resting their title upon purchase from the 

 Indians and upon their own mutual agreements. 

 The old settlers were given the prior right to the 

 locations, and until the beginning of '79 in which 

 to pay for them. Each head of a family was al- 

 lowed to take up six hundred and forty acres for 

 himself, one hundred for his wife, and one hundred 

 for each of his children, at the price of forty shill- 

 ings per hundred acres, while any additional amount 

 cost at the rate of one hundred shillings, instead of 

 forty. All of the men of the Holston settlements 

 were at the time in the service of the State as militia, 

 in the campaign against the Indians ; and when the 

 land office was opened, the money that was due 

 them sufficed to pay for their claims. They thus 



