The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 267 



work by parties from the Cherokee towns proper. 

 Stock was stolen, cabins were burned, and settlers 

 murdered. The stark riflemen gathered for re 

 venge, carrying their long rifles and riding their 

 rough mountain horses. Counter-inroads were car 

 ried into the Indian country. On one, when Sevier 

 himself led, two or three of the Indian towns were 

 burned and a score or so of warriors killed.' As 

 always, it proved comparatively easy to deal a dam 

 aging blow to these Southern Indians, who dwelt in 

 well-built log-towns; while the widely scattered, 

 shifting, wigwam-villages of the forest-nomads of 

 the North rarely offered a tangible mark at which to 

 strike. Of course, the retaliatory blows of the whites, 

 like the strokes of the Indians, fell as often on the 

 innocent as on the guilty. During this summer, to 

 revenge the death of a couple of settlers, a back 

 woods Colonel, with the appropriate name of Out 

 law, fell on a friendly Cherokee town and killed two 

 or three Indians, besides plundering a white man, 

 a North Carolina trader, who happened to be in the 

 town. Nevertheless, throughout 1786 the great ma 

 jority of the Cherokees remained quiet. 18 



Early in 1787, however, they felt the strain so 

 severely that they gathered in a great council and 

 deliberated whether they should not abandon their, 

 homes and move far out into the Western wilder 

 ness ; but they could not yet make up their minds to 

 leave their beloved mountains. The North Carolina 

 authorities wished to see them receive justice, but 



16 Va. State Papers, IV, pp. 162, 164, 176. 



