purposeless peril, and never flinched from a danger which there was an
object in encountering. His quiet, resolute fearlessness doubtless
impressed the savages to whom he went, and helped to save his life;
moreover, the Cherokees knew him, trusted his word, and were probably a
little overawed by a certain air of command to which all men that were
thrown in contact with him bore witness. His ready tact and knowledge of
Indian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs and warriors to
meet him in council, assured them of the anger and sorrow with which all
the Watauga people viewed the murder, which had undoubtedly been
committed by some outsider, and wound up by declaring his determination
to try to have the wrong-doer arrested and punished according to his
crime. The Indians, already pleased with his embassy, finally consented
to pass the affair over and not take vengeance upon innocent men. Then
the daring backwoods diplomatist, well pleased with the success of his
mission, returned to the anxious little community.

The incident, taken in connection with the plundering of a store kept by
two whites in Holston Valley at the same time, and the unprovoked
assault on Boon's party in Powell's Valley a year later, shows the
extreme difficulty of preventing the worst men of each color from
wantonly attacking the innocent. There was hardly a peaceable red or
law-abiding white who could not recite injuries he had received from
members of the opposite race; and his sense of the wrongs he had
suffered, as well as the general frontier indifference to crimes
committed against others, made him slow in punishing similar outrages by
his own people. The Watauga settlers discountenanced wrong being done
the Indians, and tried to atone for it, but they never hunted the
offenders down with the necessary mercilessness that alone could have
prevented a repetition of their offences. Similarly, but to an even
greater degree, the good Indians shielded the bad.[36]

For several years after they made their lease with the Cherokees the men
of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian neighbors. They had to
fear nothing more than a drought, a freshet, a forest fire, or an
unusually deep snow-fall if hunting on the mountains in mid-winter. They
lived in peace, hunting and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and
rearing many healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the
stubborn wilderness comfortable homes, filled with plenty.