Louisiana and Aaron Burr 181 



ting a stop to Indian attacks. The most efficient 

 means of defence was the employment of the hard- 

 iest and best hunters as scouts or spies, for they 

 traveled hither and thither through the woods and 

 continually harried the war parties. 60 The militia 

 bands also traveled to and fro, marching to the 

 rescue of some threatened settlement, or seeking to 

 intercept the attacking bands or to overtake those 

 who had delivered their stroke and were returning 

 to the Indian country. Generally they failed in the 

 pursuit. Occasionally they were themselves am- 

 bushed, attacked, and dispersed; sometimes they 

 overtook and scattered their foes. In such a case 

 they were as little apt to show mercy to the defeated 

 as were the Indians themselves. Blount issued strict 

 orders that squaws and children were not to be slain, 

 and the frontiersmen did generally refuse to copy 

 their antagonists in butchering the women and chil- 

 dren in cold blood. When an attack was made on 

 a camp, however, it was no uncommon thing to have 

 the squaws killed while jthe fight was hot. Blount, 

 in one of his letters to Robertson, after the Cumber- 

 land militia had attacked and destroyed a Creek war 

 party which had murdered a settler, expressed his 

 pleasure at the perseverance with which the militia 

 captain had followed the Indians to the banks of the 

 Tennessee, where he had been lucky enough to over- 

 take them in a position where not one was able to 

 escape. Blount especially complimented him upon 



60 American State Papers, IV, p. 364 ; letter of Secretary of 

 War, May 30, 1793. 



