hen
know when he saw an Indian he saw an enemy, and would be prepared and
act accordingly." [Footnote: American State Papers, Pickens to Blount,
Hopewell, April 28, 1792.]

The Georgia Frontier.

The people of Tennessee were the wronged, and not the wrongdoers, and it
was upon them that the heaviest strokes of the Indians fell. The Georgia
frontiers were also harried continually, although much less severely;
but the Georgians were themselves far from blameless. Georgia was the
youngest, weakest, and most lawless of the original thirteen States, and
on the whole her dealings with the Indians were far from creditable,
More than once she inflicted shameful wrong on the Cherokees. The
Creeks, however, generally wronged her more than she wronged them, and
at this particular period even the Georgia frontiersmen were much less
to blame than were their Indian foes. By fair treaty the Indians had
agreed to cede to the whites lands upon which they now refused to allow
them to settle. They continually plundered and murdered the outlying
Georgia settlers; and the militia, in their retaliatory expeditions,
having no knowledge of who the murderers actually were, quite as often
killed the innocent as the guilty. One of the complaints of the Indians
was that the Georgians came in parties to hunt on the neutral ground,
and slew quantities of deer and turkeys by fire hunting at night and by
still hunting with the rifle in the daytime, while they killed many
bears by the aid of their "great gangs of dogs." [Footnote: American
State Papers, Timothy Barnard to James Seagrove, March 26, 1793.] This
could hardly be called a legitimate objection on the part of the Creeks,
however, for their own hunting parties ranged freely through the lands
they had ceded to the whites and killed game wherever they could find
it.

Evil and fearful deeds were done by both sides. Peaceful Indians, even
envoys, going to the treaty grounds were slain in cold blood; and all
that the Georgians could allege by way of offset was that the savages
themselves had killed many peaceful whites.

Brutal Nature of the Contest in Georgia.

The Georgia frontiersmen openly showed their sullen hatred of the United
States authorities. The Georgia State government was too weak to enforce
order. It could neither keep the peace among its own frontiersmen,
nor wage effective war on the Indians; for when the militia did gather
to invade the Creek country they were so m