60 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEK [et)i.ans.19 



hilt woro met on Oconee I'iver iind driven baek })V a detiu-hniont of 

 Ameriean troops.' 



The Overhill Cherokee, on lower Little Tennessee, seem to have been 

 trying- in good faith to hold to the peace established at the Long 

 island. Early in 1781 the government land office had been closed to 

 further entries, not to be opened again until peace had been declared 

 with England, but the borderers paid little attention to the law in 

 such matters, and the rage for speculation in Tennessee lands grew 

 stronger daily.' In the fall of 1782 the chief, Old Tassel of Echota, 

 on behalf of all the friendly chiefs and towns, sent a pathetic talk 

 to the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, complaining that 

 in spite of all their eti'orts to remain quiet the settlers were constantly 

 encroaching- upon them, and had built houses within a day's walk of 

 the Cherokee towns. They asked that all those whites who had settled 

 beyond the boundary last established should be removed.-' As was 

 to have been expected, this was never done. 



The Chickamauga band, however, and those farther to the south, 

 were still bent on war. lieing actively encouraged in that disposition 

 by the British agents and refugee loyalists living- among them. They 

 continued to raid both north and south, and in September, 1782, 

 Sevier, with 200 mounted men, again made a descent upon their towns, 

 destroying- several of their settlements about Chickamauga creek, and 

 penetrating as far as the important town of Ustana'li, on the head- 

 waters of Coosa river, near the present Calhoun, Georgia. This also 

 he destroyed. Every warrior found was killed, together with a white 

 man found in one of the towns, who.se papers showed that he had been 

 active in inciting the Indians to war. On the return the expedition 

 halted at Echota. where new assurances were received from the 

 friendly element.' In the meantime a Georgia expedition of over 400 

 men, under General Pickens, had been ravaging the Cherokee towns 

 in the same quarter, with such effect that the Cherokee were forced to 

 purchase peace by a further surrender of territory on the head of 

 Broad river in Georgia." This cession was concluded at a treaty of 

 peace held with the Georgia commissioners at Augusta in the next 

 year, and was confirmed later b\r the Creeks, who claimed an interest 

 in the same lands, but was never accepted by either as the voluntary' 

 act of their tribe as a whole." 



By the preliminary treaty of Paris, November 30, 1782, the long 

 Revolutionar}' struggle for independence was brought to a close, and the 

 Cherokee, as well as the other tribes, seeing the hopelessness of con- 



1 Stevens, Georgia, ii, pp. 282-285, 1859; Jones. Georgia, ii, p. 503, 1SS3. 



= Roosevelt, Wiimins; of tlie West, ii, p, 311, 1889. 



"Old Tassel's talk, in Ramsey, Tennessee, p. 271, 1853, and in Roosevelt, op. eit.,p. 315. 



< Ramsey, op. eit., p. 272; Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 317 et passim. 



^Stevens, op. cit., pp. 411—115. 



«Royce, Cherokee Nation, in Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 151, 1888. 



