of peace this traffic
attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It became mutually
advantageous to the Indian not less than to the white man. The trap and
the rifle, thus bartered for, procured, in one day, more game to the
Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his dead-fall would have
secured during a month of toilsome hunting. Other advantages resulted
from it to the whites. They became thus acquainted with the great
avenues leading through the hunting grounds and to the occupied country
of the neighboring tribes--an important circumstance in the condition of
either war or peace. Further, the traders were an exact thermometer of
the pacific or hostile intention and feelings of the Indians with whom
they traded. Generally, they were foreigners, most frequently Scotchmen,
who had not been long in the country, or upon the frontier, who, having
experienced none of the cruelties, depredation or aggressions of the
Indians, cherished none of the resentment and spirit of retaliation born
with, and everywhere manifested, by the American settler. Thus, free
from animosity against the aborigines, the trader was allowed to remain
in the village where he traded unmolested, even when its warriors were
singing the war song or brandishing the war club, preparatory to an
invasion or massacre of the whites. Timely warning was thus often given
by a returning packman to a feeble and unsuspecting settlement, of the
perfidy and cruelty meditated against it.

"This gainful commerce was, for a time, engrossed by the traders; but
the monopoly was not allowed to continue long. Their rapid accumulations
soon excited the cupidity of another class of adventurers; and the
hunter, in his turn, became a co-pioneer with the trader, in the march
of civilization to the wilds of the West. As the agricultural population
approached the eastern base of the Alleghanies, the game became scarce,
and was to be found by severe toil in almost inaccessible recesses
and coves of the mountain. Packmen, returning from their trading
expeditions, carried with them evidences, not only of the abundance
of game across the mountains, but of the facility with which it was
procured. Hunters began to accompany the traders to the Indian towns;
but, unable to brook the tedious delay of procuring peltries by traffic,
and impatient of restraint, they struck boldly into the wilderness,
and western-like, to use a western phrase, set up for themselves. The
reports