For various reasons the proposed campaign fell through, but
the mere planning of it shows the feeling that was, at the bottom, the
strongest of those which knit together the Franklin men and the
Georgians. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 125, p. 163.] They both
greedily coveted the Indians' land, and were bent on driving the Indians
off it. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, IV., pp. 256, 353. Many of the
rumors of defeats and victories given in these papers were without
foundation.]
The Franklin Men and the Indians.
One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for the independence of
his state to the Governor of North Carolina, expressed with unusual
frankness the attitude of the Holston backwoodsmen towards the Indians.
He remarked that he supposed the Governor would be astonished to learn
that there were many settlers on the land which North Carolina had by
treaty guaranteed to the Cherokees; and brushed aside all remonstrances
by simply saying that it was vain to talk of keeping the frontiersmen
from encroaching on Indian territory. All that could be done, he said,
was to extend the laws over each locality as rapidly as it was settled
by the intruding pioneers; otherwise they would become utterly lawless,
and dangerous to their neighbors.
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