Henderson out of his head?" The most liberal terms,
proffered by one quite in possession of his head, were embodied
in these proposals. Land at twenty shillings per hundred acres
was offered to each emigrant settling within the territory and
raising a crop of corn before September 1, 1775, the emigrant
being permitted to take up as much as five hundred acres for him
self and two hundred and fifty acres for each tithable person
under him. In these "Proposals" there was no indication that the
low terms at which the lands were offered would be maintained
after September 1, 1775. In a letter to Governor Dunmore
(January, 1775), Colonel William Preston, county surveyor of
Fincastle County, Virginia, says "The low price he [Henderson]
proposes to sell at, together with some further encouragement he
offers, will I am apprehensive induce a great many families to
remove from this County (Fincastle) & Carolina and settle there."
Joseph Martin, states his son, "was appointed entry-Taker and
agent for the Powell Valley portion" of the Transylvania Purchase
on January 20, 1775; and "he (Joseph Martin) and others went on
in the early part of the year 1775 and made their stand at the
very spot where he had made corn several years before. In
speaking of the startling design, unmasked by Henderson, of
establishing an independent government, Colonel Preston writes to
George Washington of the contemplated "large Purchase by one Col.
Henderson of North Carolina from the Cherokees.... I hear
that Henderson talks with great Freedom & Indecency of the
Governor of Virginia, sets the Government at Defiance & says if
he once had five hundred good Fellows settled in that Country he
would not Value Virginia."

Early in 1775 runners were sent off to the Cherokee towns to
summon the Indians to the treaty ground at the Sycamore Shoals of
the Watauga; and Boone, after his return from a hunt in Kentucky
in January, was summoned by Judge Henderson to aid in the
negotiations preliminary to the actual treaty. The dominating
figure in the remarkable assemblage at the treaty ground,
consisting of twelve hundred Indians and several hundred whites,
was Richard Henderson, "comely in person, of a benign and social
disposition," with countenance betokening the man of strenuous
action" noble forehead, prominent nose, projecting chin, firm-set
jaw, with kindness and openness of expression." Gathered about
him, picturesque in garb and striking in appearance, wer