Moreover,
they even undertook to drive all settlers off these lands.
Of course, such a treaty excited the bitter anger of the frontiersmen,
and they scornfully refused to obey its provisions. They hated the
Indians, and, as a rule, were brutally indifferent to their rights,
while they looked down on the Federal Government as impotent. Nor was
the ill-will to the treaty confined to the rough borderers. Many men of
means found that land grants which they had obtained in good faith and
for good money were declared void. Not only did they denounce the
treaty, and decline to abide by it, but they denounced the motives of
the Commissioners, declaring, seemingly without justification, that they
had ingratiated themselves with the Indians to further land speculations
of their own. [Footnote: Clay MSS. Jesse Benton to Thos. Hart, April 3,
1786.]
Violation of the Treaty.
As the settlers declined to pay any heed to the treaty the Indians
naturally became as discontented with it as the whites. In the following
summer the Cherokee chiefs made solemn complaint that, instead of
retiring from the disputed ground, the settlers had encroached yet
farther upon it, and had come to within five miles of the beloved town
of Chota.
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