utinous and disorderly that
the expeditions generally broke up without accomplishing anything. At
one period a militia general, Elijah Clark, actually led a large party
of frontiersmen into the unceded Creek hunting grounds with the purpose
of setting up an independent government; but the Georgia authorities for
once summoned energy sufficient to break up this lawless community.
[Footnote: American State Papers, IV., pp. 260, 295, 365, 394, 397, 410,
412, 417, 427, 473, etc.; _Knoxville Gazette_, Sept. 26, 1794. For
further allusion to Clark's settlement, see next chapter.]

Blount's Faithful Efforts to Preserve the Peace.

The Georgians were thus far from guiltless themselves, though at this
time they were more sinned against than sinning; but in the Tennessee
Territory the white settlers behaved very well throughout these years,
and showed both patience and fairness in their treatment of the Indians.
Blount did his best to prevent outrages, and Sevier and Robertson
heartily seconded him. In spite of the grumbling of the frontiersmen,
and in spite of repeated and almost intolerable provocation in the way
of Indian forays, Blount steadily refused to allow counter-expeditions
into the Indian territory, and stopped both the Tennesseeans and
Kentuckians when they prepared to make such expeditions. [Footnote:
Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 8, 1793; to Benjamin Logan,
Nov. 1, 1794, etc.] Judge Campbell, the same man who was himself
attacked by the Indians when returning from his circuit, in his charge
to the Grand Jury at the end of 1791, particularly warned them to stop
any lawless attack upon the Indians. In November, 1792, when five
Creeks, headed by a Scotch half-breed, retreated to the Cherokee town of
Chiloa with stolen horses, a band of fifty whites gathered to march
after them and destroy the Cherokee town; but Sevier dispersed them and
made them go to their own homes. The following February a still larger
band gathered to attack the Cherokee towns and were dispersed by Blount
himself. Robertson, in the summer of 1793, prevented militia parties
from crossing the Tennessee in retaliation. In October, 1794, the Grand
Jury of Hamilton County entreated and adjured the people, in spite of
the Indian outrages to stand firmly by the law, and not to try to be
their own avengers; and when some whites settled in Powell's Valley, on
Cherokee lands, Governor Blount promptly turned them off. [Footnote:
_Knoxville