The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
This treaty was solemnly entered into by the recognized chiefs and
leaders of the Creeks; and the Americans fondly hoped that it would end
hostilities. It did nothing of the kind. Though the terms were very
favorable to the Indians, so much so as to make the frontiersmen
grumble, the Creeks scornfully repudiated the promises made on their
behalf by their authorized representatives. Their motive in going to
war, and keeping up the war, was not so much anger at the encroachments
of the whites, as the eager thirst for glory, scalps, and plunder, to be
won at the expense of the settlers. The war parties raided the frontier
as freely as ever. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Williamson to Robertson,
Aug. 2, 1789, and Aug. 7, 1790. American State Papers, Indian Affairs,
i., 81. Milfort 131, 142.] The simple truth was that the Creeks could be
kept quiet only when cowed by physical fear. If the white men did not
break the treaties, then the red men did. It is idle to dispute about
the rights or wrongs of the contests. Two peoples, in two stages of
culture which were separated by untold ages, stood face to face; one or
the other had to perish; and the whites went forward from sheer
necessity.
Growth of Immigration.
Throughout these years of Indian warfare the influx of settlers into the
Holston and Cumberland regions steadily continued. Men in search of
homes, or seeking to acquire fortunes by the purchase of wild lands,
came more and more freely to the Cumberland country as the settlers
therein increased in number and became better able to cope with and
repel their savage foes. The settlements on the Holston grew with great
rapidity as soon as the Franklin disturbances were at an end. As the
people increased in military power, they increased also in material
comfort, and political stability. The crude social life deepened and
broadened. Comfortable homes began to appear among the huts and hovels
of the little towns. The outlying settlers still lived in wooden forts
or stations; but where the population was thicker, the terror of the
Indians diminished, and the people lived in the ordinary style of
frontier farmers.
The South-western Territory Organized.
Early in 1790, North Carolina finally ceded, and the National Government
finally accepted, what is now Tennessee; and in May, Congress passed a
law for the government of this Territory Southwest of the River Ohio, as
they chose to call it. This law followed on the general lines of the
Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwest; but there was
one important difference. North Carolina had made her cession
conditional upon the non-passage of any law tending to emancipate
slaves. At that time such a condition was inevitable; but it doomed the
Southwest to suffer under the curse of negro bondage.
Blount Made Governor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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