the depravity of the white man it might have continued uninterrupted
for generations. But profligate and vagabond adventurers from the
settlements defrauded the Indians, insulted their women, and often
committed wanton murder. But it would seem that the majority of the
traders were honest men. Ramsay, in his Annals of Tennessee, writes, in
reference to this traffic:

"Other advantages resulted from it to the whites. They became thus
acquainted with the great avenues leading through the hunting ground,
and to the occupied country of the neighboring tribes--an important
circumstance in the condition of either peace or war. 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, depredations 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 where 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."

Game on the eastern side of the Alleghanies, hunted down alike by white
men and Indians, soon became scarce. Adventurers combining the
characters of traders and hunters rapidly multiplied. Many of the
hunters among the white men far outstripped the Indians in skill and
energy. Thus some degree of jealousy was excited on the part of the
savages. They saw how rapidly the game was disappearing, and these
thoughtful men began to be anxious for the future. With no love for
agriculture the destruction of the game was their ruin.

As early as the year 1748 quite a party of gentlemen explorers, under
the leadership of Doctor Thomas Walker of Virginia, crossed a range of
the Alleghany mountains, which the Indians called Warioto, but to which
Doctor Walker gave the name of Cumberland, in honor of the Duke of
Cumberland who was then prime minister of England. Following along this
chain in a south-westerly direction, in search of some pass or defile by