The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 115 



this treaty the Commissioners promised altogether 

 too much. They paid little heed to the rights and 

 needs of the settlers. Neither did they keep in 

 mind the powerlessness of the Federal Government 

 to enforce against these settlers what their treaty 

 promised the Indians. The pioneers along the upper 

 Tennessee and the Cumberland had made various 

 arrangements with bands of the Cherokees, some 

 times acting on their own initiative and sometimes 

 on behalf of the State of North Carolina. Many 

 of these different agreements were entered into by 

 the whites with honesty and good faith, but were 

 violated at will by the Indians. Others were vio 

 lated by the whites, or were repudiated by the In 

 dians as well, because of some real or fancied un 

 fairness in the making. Under them large quanti 

 ties of land had been sold or allotted, and hundreds 

 of homes had been built on the lands thus won by 

 the whites or ceded by the Indians. As with all 

 Indian treaties, it was next to impossible to say ex 

 actly how far these agreements were binding, be 

 cause no persons, not even the Indians themselves, 

 could tell exactly who had authority to represent 

 the tribes. 2 The Commissioners paid little heed to 

 these treaties, and drew the boundary so that quan 

 tities of land which had been entered under regular 

 grants, and were covered by the homesteads of the 

 frontiersmen, were declared to fall within the 

 Cherokee line. Moreover, they even undertook to 

 drive all settlers off these lands. 



* American State Papers, Public Lands, I, p. 40, vi. 



