ho persisted in encroaching upon the
Indian lands. When the Indian ravages were resumed, Sevier and
Anderson, the latter from Sullivan County, led a punitive
expedition of two hundred riflemen against the Creeks and the
Chickamaugas; and employing the customary tactics of laying waste
the Indian towns, administered stern and salutary chastisement to
the copper-colored marauders.

During this same period the settlers on the Cumberland were
displaying a grim fortitude and stoical endurance in the face of
Indian attack forever memorable in the history of the Old
Southwest. On the night of January 15, 1781, the settlers at
Freeland's Station, after a desperate resistance, succeeded in
beating off the savages who attacked in force. At Nashborough on
April 2d, twenty of the settlers were lured from the stockade by
the artful wiles of the savages; and it was only after serious
loss that they finally won their way back to the protection of
the fort. Indeed, their return was due to the fierce dogs of the
settlers, which were released at the most critical moment, and
attacked the astounded Indians with such ferocity that the
diversion thus created enabled the settlers to escape from the
deadly trap. During the next two years the history of the
Cumberland settlements is but the gruesome recital of murder
after murder of the whites, a few at a time, by the lurking
Indian foe. Robertson's dominant influence alone prevented the
abandonment of the sorely harassed little stations. The arrival
of the North Carolina commissioners for the purpose of laying off
bounty lands and settlers' preemptions, and the treaty of peace
concluded at the French Lick on November 5 and 6, 1783, gave
permanence and stability to the Cumberland settlements. The
lasting friendship of the Chickasaws was won; but the Creeks for
some time continued to harass the Tennessee pioneers. The
frontiersmen's most formidable foe, the Cherokees, stoically,
heroically fighting the whites in the field, and smallpox,
syphilis, and drunkenness at home, at last abandoned the unequal
battle. The treaty at Hopewell on November 28, 1785, marks the
end of an era--the Spartan yet hopeless resistance of the
intrepid red men to the relentless and frequently unwarranted
expropriation by the whites of the ancient and immemorial domain
of the savage.

The skill in self-government of the isolated people beyond the
mountains, and the ability they had already demonstrated in the
orga