dministration was
continually upbraiding him for being too active against the Indians, and
for not keeping the frontiersmen sufficiently peaceable. Under much
temptations, and in a situation that would have bewildered any one,
Blount steadfastly followed his course of, on the one hand, striving his
best to protect the people over whom he was placed as governor, and to
repel the savages, while, on the other hand, he suppressed so far as lay
in his power, any outbreak against the authorities, and tried to
inculcate a feeling of loyalty and respect for the National Government.
[Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Feb. 13, 1793.] He did
much in creating a strong feeling of attachment to the Union among the
rough backwoodsmen with whom he had thrown in his lot.

Treaty of Holston with the Cherokees.

Early in 1791 Blount entered into negotiations with the Cherokees, and
when the weather grew warm, he summoned them to a treaty. They met on
the Holston, all of the noted Cherokee chiefs and hundreds of their
warriors being present, and concluded the treaty of Holston, by which,
in consideration of numerous gifts and of an annuity of a thousand
(afterwards increased to fifteen hundred) dollars, the Cherokees at last
definitely abandoned their disputed claims to the various tracts of land
which the whites claimed under various former treaties. By this treaty
with the Cherokees, and by the treaty with the Creeks entered into at
New York the previous summer, the Indian title to most of the present
State of Tennessee, was fairly and legally extinguished. However the
westernmost part, was still held by the Chickasaws, and certain tracts
in the southeast, by the Cherokees; while the Indian hunting grounds in
the middle of the territory were thrust in between the groups of
settlements on the Cumberland and the Holston.

Knoxville Founded.
The "Knoxville Gazette."

On the ground where the treaty was held Blount proceeded to build a
little town, which he made the capital of the Territory, and christened
Knoxville, in honor of Washington's Secretary of War. At this town there
was started, in 1791, under his own supervision, the first newspaper of
Tennessee, known as the _Knoxville Gazette_. It was four or five years
younger than the only other newspaper of the then far West, the
_Kentucky Gazette_. The paper gives an interesting glimpse of many of
the social and political conditions of the day. In political tone it