Of course, the retaliatory blows of
the whites, like the strokes of the Indians, fell as often on the
innocent as on the guilty. During this summer, to revenge the death of a
couple of settlers, a backwoods Colonel, with the appropriate name of
Outlaw, fell on a friendly Cherokee town and killed two or three
Indians, besides plundering a white man, a North Carolina trader, who
happened to be in the town. Nevertheless, throughout 1786 the great
majority of the Cherokees remained quiet. [Footnote: Va. State Papers,
IV., pp. 162, 164, 176.]
Early in 1787, however, they felt the strain so severely that they
gathered in a great council and deliberated whether they should not
abandon their homes and move far out into the western wilderness; but
they could not yet make up their minds to leave their beloved mountains.
The North Carolina authorities wished to see them receive justice, but
all they could do was to gather the few Indian prisoners who had been
captured in the late wars and return them to the Cherokees. The Franklin
Government had opened a land office and disposed of all the lands
between the French Broad and the Tennessee, [Footnote: State Dept. MSS.
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