eized the negro, who proving strongest,
threw him on the floor, when the woman dispatched him with an axe. The
other Indians coming up, attempted to force open the door which had been
closed by the children during the scuffle. There was no gun in the
house, but the woman seized an old barrel of one, and thrust the muzzle
through the logs, at which the Indians retreated.

The year 1783 passed away without any disturbance from the Indians, who
were restrained by the desertion of their allies the British. In 1784,
the southern frontier of Kentucky was alarmed by the rumor of an
intended invasion by the Cherokees, and some preparations were made for
an expedition against them, which fell through, however, because there
was no authority to carry it on. The report of the hostility of the
Cherokees proved to be untrue.

Meanwhile difficulties arose in performance of the terms of the treaty
between England and the United States. They appear to have originated
in a dispute in regard to an article contained in the treaty, providing
that the British army should not carry away with them any negroes or
other property belonging to the American inhabitants. In consequence of
what they deemed an infraction of this article, the Virginians refused
to comply with another, which stipulated for the repeal of acts
prohibiting the collection of debts due to British subjects. The British,
on the other hand, refused to evacuate the western posts till this
article was complied with. It was natural that the intercourse which had
always existed between the Indians and the garrisons of these posts,
during the period they had acted as allies, should continue, and it did.

In the unwritten history of the difficulties of the United States
Government with the Indian tribes within her established boundaries,
nothing appears clearer than this truth: that the fierce and sanguinary
resistance of the aborigines to the encroachments of the Anglo-Americans
has ever been begun and continued more through the instigations of
outlawed white men, who had sought protection among them from the arm
of the law or the knife of individual vengeance, and been adopted into
their tribes, than from the promptings of their own judgments, their
disregard of death, their thirst for the blood of their oppressors,
or their love of country.[46]

That their sense of wrong has at all times been keen, their hate deadly,
and their bravery great, is a fact beyond dispute; and that