The United States government prevented the Georgians from compelling the Indians to sell their lands, but nothing could prevent them from trespass; and the Indian woods along the frontier were filled with cattle, horses, and hogs belonging to the whites, while white men destroyed the game, hunting the deer by firelight, and scaring the Indian hunters from their hunting-grounds. “Every cane-swamp where they go to look for a bear--which is part of their support--is near eat out by the stocks put over by the citizens of Georgia.”[316] This complaint was made in 1796, and as time went on the Indian hunting-grounds were more rapidly narrowed. Not only from Georgia but also from Fort Stoddert, along the course of the Tombigbee River, above Mobile, intruders pressed into the Creek country. The Indians had no choice but to sell their lands for annuities, and under this pressure the Creeks, in 1802 and 1803, were induced to part with the district between the Oconee and Ocmulgee in the centre of Georgia. They retained their towns on the Chattahoochee, where Hawkins’s agency was established in the town of Coweta, on the edge of the Creek country. Hawkins was satisfied with their behavior, and believed the chiefs to be well disposed. They showed none of the restlessness which characterized the Northwestern Indians, until Tecumthe conceived the idea of bringing them into his general league to check the encroachments of the whites. After Tecumthe’s interview with Governor Harrison at Vincennes, in July, 1811, he made a long journey through the Chickasaw and Choctaw country, and arrived among the Creeks in October, bringing with him a score of Indian warriors. The annual council of the Creeks was held in that month at the village of Tuckaubatchee,--an ancient town of the Upper Creeks on the Tallapoosa. The rumor that Tecumthe would be present brought great numbers of Indians, even Cherokees and Choctaws, to the place, while Hawkins attended the council in his character as agent.