io The Winning of the West 



In the following year, 1789, Robertson himself 

 had a narrow escape. He was at work with some 

 of his field hands in a clearing. One man was on 

 guard and became alarmed at some sound; Robert- 

 son snatched up his gun, and, while he was peering 

 into the woods, the Indians fired on him. He ran 

 toward the station and escaped, but only at the cost 

 of a bullet through the foot. Immediately sixty 

 mounted riflemen gathered at Robertson's station, 

 and set out after the fleeing Indians ; but finding that 

 in the thick wood they did not gain on their foes, 

 and were hampered by their horses, twenty picked 

 men were sent ahead. Among these twenty men 

 was fierce, moody young Andrew Jackson. They 

 found the Indians in camp, at daybreak, but fired 

 from too great a distance ; they killed one, wounded 

 others, and scattered the rest, who left sixteen guns 

 behind them in their flight. 12 



During these two years many people were killed, 

 both in the settlements, on the trail through the 

 woods, and on the Tennessee River, as they drifted 

 down-stream in their boats. As always in these 

 contests, the innocent suffered with the guilty. The 

 hideous border ruffians, the brutal men who mur- 

 dered peaceful Indians in times of truce and butch- 

 ered squaws and children in time of war, fared no 

 worse than unoffending settlers or men of mark 

 who had been stanch friends of the Indian peoples. 

 The Legislatures of the seaboard States, and Con- 

 gress itself, passed laws to punish men who com- 



12 Haywood, 244 



