The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 255 



control all their people, some of whom were present 

 at the time appointed. With the Indians who were 

 thus present the whites went through the form of a 

 treaty under which they received large cessions of 

 Cherokee lands. The ordinary results of such a 

 treaty followed. The Indians who had not signed 

 promptly repudiated as unauthorized and ineffective 

 the action of the few who had; and the latter as 

 serted that they had been tricked into signing, and 

 were not aware of the true nature of the document 

 to which they had affixed their marks. 7 The whites 

 heeded these protests not at all, but kept the land 

 they had settled. 



In fact the attitude of the Franklin people toward 

 the Cherokees was one of mere piracy. In the 

 August session of their Legislature they passed a 

 law to encourage an expedition to go down the 

 Tennessee on the west side and take possession of 

 the country in the great bend of that river under 

 titles derived from the State of Georgia. The 

 eighty or ninety men composing this expedition act 

 ually descended the river, and made a settlement by 

 the Muscle Shoals, in what the Georgians called the 

 county of Houston. They opened a land office, or 

 ganized a county government, and elected John 

 Sevier's brother, Valentine, to represent them in the 

 Georgia Legislature ; but that body refused to allow 

 him a seat. After a fortnight's existence the atti 

 tude of the Indians became so menacing that the 

 settlement broke up and was abandoned. 



T Talk of Old Tassel, September 19, 1785, Ramsey, 319. 



