St. Clair and Wayne 17 



Creeks could be kept quiet only when cowed by phys- 

 ical fear. If the white men did not break the trea- 

 ties, then the red men did. It is idle to dispute about 

 the rights or wrongs of the contests. Two peoples, 

 in two stages of culture which were separated by 

 untold ages, stood face to face; one or the other 

 had to perish ; and the whites went forward from 

 sheer necessity. 



Throughout these years of Indian warfare the in- 

 flux of settlers into the Holston and Cumberland 

 regions steadily continued. Men in search of homes, 

 or seeking to acquire fortunes by the purchase of 

 wild lands, came more and more freely to the Cum- 

 berland country as the settlers therein increased in 

 number and became better able to cope with and re- 

 pel their savage foes. The settlements on the Hol- 

 ston grew with great rapidity as soon as the Frank- 

 lin disturbances were at an end. As the people in- 

 creased in military power, they increased also in 

 material comfort and political stability. The crude 

 social life deepened and broadened. Comfortable 

 homes began to appear among the huts and hovels 

 of the little towns. The outlying settlers still lived 

 in wooden forts or stations; but where the popula- 

 tion was thicker the terror of the Indians dimin- 

 ished, and the people lived in the ordinary style of 

 frontier farmers. 



Early in 1790 North Carolina finally ceded, and 

 the National Government finally accepted, what is 

 now Tennessee; and in May Congress passed a law 

 for the government of this Territory Southwest of 



