few
Shawnees who possessed no fixed residence; and in groping for a remedy
he weakly suggested that inasmuch as many of the Cherokees seemed to be
dissatisfied with the boundary line they had established by treaty it
would perhaps be well to alter it. [Footnote: State Dep. MSS.,
Washington Papers, Secretary of War to the President, July 28, and Aug.
5, 1792.] Of course the adoption of such a measure would have amounted
to putting a premium on murder and treachery.

Odd Manifestations of Particularistic Feeling.

If the Easterners were insensible to the Western need for a vigorous
Indian war, many of the Westerners showed as little appreciation of the
necessity for any Indian war which did not immediately concern
themselves. Individual Kentuckians, individual colonels and captains of
the Kentucky militia, were always ready to march to the help of the
Tennesseeans against the Southern Indians; but the highest officials of
Kentucky were almost as anxious as the Federal authorities to prevent
any war save that with the tribes northwest of the Ohio. One of the
Kentucky senators, Brown, in writing to the Governor, Isaac Shelby, laid
particular stress upon the fact that nothing but the most urgent
necessity could justify a war with the Southern Indians. [Footnote:
Shelby MSS., J. Brown to Isaac Shelby, Philadelphia, June 2, 1793.]
Shelby himself sympathized with this feeling. He knew what an Indian war
was, for he had owed his election largely to his record as an Indian
fighter and to the confidence the Kentuckians felt in his power to
protect them from their red foes. [Footnote: _Do_., M. D. Hardin to
Isaac Shelby, April 10, 1792, etc., etc.] His correspondence is filled
with letters in relation to Indian affairs, requests to authorize the
use of spies, requests to establish guards along the wilderness road and
to garrison blockhouses on the frontier; and sometimes there are more
pathetic letters, from a husband who had lost a wife, or from an "old,
frail woman," who wished to know if the Governor could not by some means
get news of her little granddaughter who had been captured in the
wilderness two years before by a party of Indians. [Footnote: _Do._,
Letter of Mary Mitchell to Isaac Shelby, May 1, 1793.] He realized fully
what hostilities meant, and had no desire to see his State plunged into
any Indian war which could be avoided.

Yet, in spite of this cautious attitude, Shelby had much influence with
the people of