urns,
but of great profits to the trader. And it was of about equal advantage
to the Indian; for with the trap or rifle he had gotten for a few skins
he was able to secure more game in a day than his bow and arrow and rude
"dead-fall" would procure for him in a month of toilsome hunting. The
traders were therefore held in high esteem among the Cherokees, who
encouraged their living and even marrying among them. In fact, such
alliances were deemed highly honorable, and were often sought by the
daughters of the most distinguished chiefs. Consequently, among the
trader's other chattels would often be found a dusky mate and a
half-dozen half-breed children; and this, too, when he had already a
wife and family somewhere in the white settlements.

These traders were an important class in the early history of the
country. Of necessity well acquainted with the various routes traversing
the Indian territory, and with the state of feeling among the savages,
and passing frequently to and fro between the Indian towns and the white
settlements, they were often enabled to warn the whites of intended
attacks, and to guide such hostile parties as invaded the Cherokee
territory. Though often natives of North Carolina or Virginia, and in
sympathy with the colonists, they were, if prudent of speech and
behavior, allowed to remain unmolested in the Indian towns, even when
the warriors were singing the war-song and brandishing the war-club on
the eve of an intended massacre of the settlers.

Living in Echota at this time was one of this class who, on account of
his great services to the colonists, is deserving of special mention.
His name was Isaac Thomas, and he is said to have been a native of
Virginia. He is described as a man about forty years of age, over six
feet in height, straight, long-limbed, and wiry, and with a frame so
steeled by twenty years of mountain-life that he could endure any
conceivable hardship. His features were strongly marked and regular, and
they wore an habitual expression of comic gravity; but on occasion his
dark, deep-set eye had been known to light up with a look of
unconquerable pluck and determination. He wore moccasins and
hunting-shirt of buckskin, and his face, neck, and hands, from long
exposure, had grown to be of the same color as that material. His
coolness and intrepidity had been shown on many occasions, and these
qualities, together with his immense strength, had secured him high
esteem among th