Louisiana and Aaron Burr 179 



settler on his lonely farm, and now a justice of the 

 peace going to Court, or a Baptist preacher striving 

 to reach the Cumberland country that he might 

 preach the word of God to the people who had 

 among them no religious instructor. The express 

 messengers and post riders, who went through the 

 wilderness from one commander to the other, al- 

 ways rode at hazard of their lives. In one of 

 Blount's letters to Robertson he remarks : "Your let- 

 ter of the 6th of February sent express by James 

 Russell was handed to me, much stained with his 

 blood, by Mr. Shannon, who accompanied him." 

 Russell had been wounded in an ambuscade, and his 

 fifty dollars were dearly earned. 58 



The Indians were even more fond of horse-steal- 

 ing than of murder, and they found a ready market 

 for their horses, not only in their own nations and 

 among the Spaniards, but among the American 

 frontiersmen themselves. Many of the unscrupulous 

 white scoundrels who lived on the borders of the 

 Indian country made a regular practice of receiving 

 the stolen horses. As soon as a horse was driven 

 from the Tennessee or Cumberland it was hurried 

 through the Indian country to the Carolina or Geor- 

 gia frontiers, where the red thieves delivered it to 



58 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, March 8, 1794. 

 The files of the "Knoxville Gazette" are full of details of 

 these outrages, and so are the letters of Blount to the Secre- 

 tary of War given in the American State Papers, as well as 

 the letters of Blount and Robertson in the two bound vol- 

 umes of Robertson MSS. Many of them are quoted in more 

 accessible form in Haywood. 



