fifteen hundred dollars to keep the peace." [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazette_, March 23, 1793.] A public address was issued in the _Knoxville
Gazette_ by the Tennesseeans on the subjects of their wrongs. In
respectful and loyal language, but firmly, the Tennesseeans called the
attention of the Government authorities to their sufferings. They avowed
the utmost devotion to the Union and a determination to stand by the
laws, but insisted that it would be absolutely necessary for them to
take measures to defend themselves by retaliating on the Indians.

Nature of the Indian Inroads.

A feature of the address was its vivid picture of the nature of the
ordinary Indian inroad and of the lack of any definite system of defence
on the frontier. It stated that the Indian raid or outbreak was usually
first made known either by the murder of some defenceless farmer, the
escape of some Indian trader, or the warning of some friendly Indian who
wished to avoid mischief. The first man who received the news, not
having made any agreement with the other members of the community as to
his course in such an emergency, ran away to his kinsfolk as fast as he
could. Every neighbor caught the alarm, thought himself the only person
left to fight, and got off on the same route as speedily as possible,
until, luckily for all, the meeting of the roads on the general retreat,
the difficulty of the way, the straying of horses, and sometimes the
halting to drink whiskey, put a stop to "the hurly-burly of the flight"
and reminded the fugitives that by this time they were in sufficient
force to rally; and then they would return "to explore the plundered
country and to bury the unfortunate scalped heads in the fag-end of the
retreat"; whereas if there had been an appointed rendezvous where all
could rally it would have prevented such a flight from what might
possibly have been a body of Indians far inferior in numbers to the
armed men of the settlements attacked. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_,
April 6, 1793.]

The Frontiersmen Ask Permission to Retaliate.

The convention of Mero district early petitioned Congress for the right
to retaliate on the Indians and to follow them to their towns, stating
that they had refrained from doing so hitherto not from cowardice, but
only from regard to Government, and that they regretted that their
"rulers" (the Federal authorities at Philadelphia) did not enter into
their feelings or seem to sympathize with th