Under such conditions the peace negotiations were doomed from the outset. The truce on the border was of the most imperfect description; murders and robberies by the Indians, and acts of vindictive retaliation or aggression by the whites, occurred continually and steadily increased in number. In 1784 a Cherokee of note, when sent to warn the intruding settlers on the French Broad that they must move out of the land, was shot and slain in a fight with a local militia captain. Cherokee war bands had already begun to harry the frontier and infest the Kentucky Wilderness Road. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 277.] At the same time the northwestern Indians likewise committed depredations, and were only prevented from making a general league against the whites by their own internal dissensions--the Chickasaws and Kickapoos being engaged in a desperate war. [Footnote: _Do_., Mühlenberg's Letter.] The Wabash Indians were always threatening hostilities. The Shawnees for some time observed a precarious peace, and even, in accordance with their agreement, brought in and surrendered a few white prisoners; and among the Delawares and Wyandots there was also a strong friendly party; but in all three tribes the turbulent element was never under real control, and it gradually got the upper hand. Meanwhile the Georgians and Creeks in the south were having experiences of precisely the same kind--treaties fraudulently procured by the whites, or fraudulently entered into and violated by the Indians; encroachments by white settlers on Indian lands, and bloody Indian forays among the peaceful settlements. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 73, pp. 7, 343. Gazette of the State of Georgia, Aug. 5, 1784, May 25, June 1, Nov. 2, Nov. 30, 1786.] The more far-sighted and resolute among all the Indians, northern and southern, began to strive for a general union against the Americans. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 20, pp. 321 and 459; No. 18, p. 140; No. 12, vol. ii., June 30. 1786.] In 1786 the northwestern Indians almost formed such a union. Two thousand warriors gathered at the Shawnee towns and agreed to take up the hatchet against the Americans; British agents were present at the council; and even before the council was held, war parties were bringing into the Shawnee towns the scalps of American settlers, and prisoners, both men and women, who were burned at the stake. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 60, p. 277, Sept. 13, 1786.] But the jealousy and irresolution of the tribes prevented the actual formation of a league.