The mania for obtaining slaves by piratical violence, seems to have reached a point almost incredible to the people of the free States. E-con-chattimico was one of the chiefs whose reservation lay on the west side of the river. He had long been highly respected by the whites. He owned some twenty slaves, who were residing with him in a state of partial freedom--paying him an annual stipend of provisions for their time, and holding such property as they could acquire. Connected with these slaves, and with some of the Indians on the Reservation, were about an equal number of Exiles, who had never known slavery, but whose ancestors, in former generations, had toiled in bondage. Unwilling to separate from their intimate friends and connexions, they had, as stated in a former chapter, come here to occupy, with E-con-chattimico and his friends, one of the extensive plantations which had been occupied by their brethren who fell at Blount's Fort, in 1816. The chief had named them as his friends, and a record of the fact had been deposited in the office of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and for their conduct E-con-chattimico was responsible, under the treaty of "Camp Moultrie;" while, by the same instrument, the faith of the nation had been solemnly pledged "to protect them _against all persons whatsoever_." The piratical slave-dealers of Georgia looked upon these people, both Exiles and slaves, with strong desire to possess them. One of these fiends in human shape, named Milton, residing in Columbus, Georgia, professed to have purchased them from a Creek Indian. The claim was presented to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and by him referred to Judge Cameron, of the United States District Court in Florida, for examination. The chief being a man of influence and respected by the whites, found friends to espouse his cause. The claimant began to doubt his success under such circumstances, and proposed to withdraw his claim; but so flagrant was its fraudulent character, that Judge Cameron felt it his duty to report upon it, showing it to be void.[72] This report was duly transmitted to the proper department at Washington, and the Old Chief, with his people, once more reposed in apparent security. It has been alleged, that men who so far paralyze their own moral sensibilities as to rob their fellow-men of their labor, their liberty, their manhood, and hold them in degrading bondage, can not entertain any clear conceptions of right and wrong. However this may be, it is certain that men who deal in slaves, are ever regarded, even by slaveholders, as destitute of moral sentiment.