156 The Winning of the West 



Indians little more than what the tribes had pre- 

 viously granted, except that they confirmed to the 

 whites the country upon which the pioneers were 

 already settled. The Cumberland district had al- 

 ready been granted over and over again by the 

 Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the 

 North Carolinians and to the United States. The 

 Creeks in particular never had had any claim to 

 this Cumberland country, which was a hundred 

 miles and over from any of their towns. All the 

 use they had ever made of it was to visit it with 

 their hunting parties, as did the Cherokees, Choc- 

 taws, Chickasaws, Shawnees, Delawares, and many 

 others. Yet the Creeks and other Indians had the 

 effrontery afterward to assert that the Cumberland 

 country had never been ceded at all, and that as 

 the settlers in it were thus outside of the territory 

 properly belonging to the United States, they were 

 not entitled to protection under the treaty entered 

 into with the latter. 



Blount was vigilant and active in seeing that none 

 of the frontiersmen trespassed on the Indian lands, 

 and when a party of men, claiming authority under 

 Georgia, started to settle at the Muscle Shoals, he 

 co-operated actively with the Indians in having them 

 brought back, and did his best, though in vain, to 

 persuade the Grand Jury to indict the offenders. 24 

 He was explicit in his orders to Sevier, to Robert- 

 son, and to District-Attorney Jackson that they 

 should promptly punish any white man who vio- 



24 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 3. I79 1 - 



