xt7dz02z3k64 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7dz02z3k64/data/mets.xml Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. 1897  books b92f352w782009 English Houghton, Mifflin and company : Boston, Ma. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Mississippi River Valley. The westward movement. The colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798; with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources. text The westward movement. The colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798; with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources. 1897 2009 true xt7dz02z3k64 section xt7dz02z3k64 
    
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NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. With Bibliographical and Descriptive Essays on its Historical Sources and Authorities. Profusely illustrated with portraits, maps, facsimiles, etc. Edited by Justin Winsor, Librarian of Harvard University, with the cooperation of a Committee from the Massachusetts Historical Society,-and with the aid of other learned Societies.   In eight royal Svo volumes.

(Sold only by subscription for the entire set.)

READER'S HANDBOOK OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

WAS SHAKESPEARE SHAPLEIGH? x6mo, rubricated parchment paper.

CH RISTOPH ER COLU M BUS, and how he received and imparted the Spirit of Discovery. With portraits and maps.

CARTIER TO FRONTENAC. A Study of Geographical Discovery in the interior of North America, in its historical relations, 1534-1700. With full cartographical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources.

THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN. The Struggle in America between England and France, 1697-1763. With full cartographical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources.

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT: The Struggle for the Trans-Allegheny Region, 1763-1707. With full cartographical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources.

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN COMPANY, Boston and New York. 
   Cf)e fUesttoarti jftotoment

THE COLONIES AND THE REPUBLIC

WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES i763-1798

1

WITH FULL CARTOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES

BY

JUSTIN WINSOR

BOSTON AND   NEW YORK HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN COMPANY (STbe Riliersi&c press Cambtibijc 
    
   Sir HENRY W. DYKE ACLAND, Bart.,

K. C. B., D. C. L., LL. D., F. R. S., Honorary Physician to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.

My dear Sir Henry,    

When a few days ago at the Bodleian you addressed a party of sixty American librarians, you showed what I have long known, that you have a kind appreciation of my countrymen, with some of whom your friendship has lasted from the time when you accompanied the Prince of Wales to the States in 1860.

You have since then traversed our laud on other visits, during which you have evinced to me your interest in our history, particularly when some years ago we together looked over the ground hallowed by the devotion of Lady Harriet Acland.

I therefore like to connect your name with this book, which is a story of how much of our territorial integrity we owe to British forbearance, when the false-hearted diplomacy of France and Spain would have despoiled us.

Ever your friend. .

Great Malvern, Worcestershire, August 8,1897. 
    
   CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

page

An Introductory Survey...............1

CHAPTER II.

The Property Line, 1763-1764 .............4

Illustrations : Guy Johnson's Map of the Fort Stanwix Line, 15 ; Hutchins's Map of the Indiana Grant, 17 ; Guy Johnson's Map of the Country of the Six Nations, 18, 19.

CHAPTER III.

Louisiana, Florida, and the Illinois Country, 1763-1768  .   . 22 Illustrations : Hutchins's Map of the American Bottom, 27; Country of the Southern Indians (1762), 31 ; Evans and Pow-nall's Map of the Northwest, 39.

CHAPTER IV.

The Kentucky Region, 1767-1774 ............ 43

Illustrations : Portrait of Daniel Boone, 45 ; View of Pittsburg, 51 ; Kjtchin's Map of Pennsylvania, 54, 55.

CHAPTER V.

The Quebec Bill and the Dunmore War, 1774 ...... 63

Illustration : Crevecoeur's Map of the Scioto Valley, 67.

CHAPTER VI.

South of the Ohio, 1769-1776 ............. 77

Illustrations : Boonesborough Fort, 83 ; Map of Colonel Andrew Williamson's Campaign in the Cherokee Country, 94, 95. 
   vi

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER VII.

The Fortunes of the Mississippi, 1766-1777 ........ 101

Illustrations : Portrait of Jonathan Carver, 102 ; Carver's Map of his Proposed Colonies, 105 ; Map of the Vicinity of New

Orleans (1778), 109.

CHAPTER VIII.

George Rogers Clark, Arbiter and Suppliant, 1776-1779   .   . 116 Illustration : Map of the Rapids of the Ohio, 119.

CHAPTER IX.

The Sinister Purposes of France, 1774-1779 ....... 144

CHAPTER X.

A Year of Suspense, 1780 ............. 166

Illustration : Fortifications of St. Louis, 172, 173.

CHAPTER XI.

East and West, 1781.................188

Illustration : Map of the Disputed Boundaries of Pennsylvania and Virginia, 197.

CHAPTER XII.

Peace, 1782 .................... 203

Illustrations : Bonne's Map of the Thirteen United States, bounded by the Alleghanies, 211 ; Dunn's Map of the Source of the Mississippi (1776), 214 ; Carver's Map of the Source of the Mississippi, 215.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Insecurity of the Northwest, 1783-1787 ....... 225

Illustrations : Imlay's Map of Kentucky, 249 ; Washington's Sketch of the Potomac Divide, 253 ; Heckewelder's MS. Map of the Muskingum and Cuyahoga Valleys, 255 ; Crevecoeur's Map of the Western Country, with the Divisions under Jefferson's Ordinance, 259 ; View of Fort Mcintosh, 269. 
   CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. vii

CHAPTER XIV.

The Northwest Occupied, 1786-1790 ........... 280

Illustrations : Map of the Ohio Company's Purchase by Collot, 291 ; View of Fort Harmar, 293 ; Crevecoeur's Map of the Ohio Country, 294, 295 ; Chart of the Ohio River, 297 ; Crevecoeur's Map of the Mouth of the Muskingum, 300, 301 ; Harris's Map of Marietta, 303 ; Collot's View of Marietta, 305 ; View of the Campus Martins, 307 ; Barlow's Map of the Ohio Company's Purchase, 312, 313 ; Sketch of Fitch's Map of the Northwest, 322.

CHAPTER XV.

The Southwest Insecure, 1783-1786 .......... 326

Illustration : Filson's Map of Kentucky, 332, 333.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Spanish Question, 1787-1789 ............ 351

Illustrations : Plan of New Madrid, 363 ; Jedediah Morse's Map of the Northwest, 364, 365.

CHAPTER XVII. Uncertainties in the Southwest, 1790 ......... 375

Illustrations : Morse's Map of Georgia, 377 ; Samuel Lewis's Map of the Alabama Region, 381 ; Country of the Creeks, 383 ; Pond's Map of the Grand Portage, 391 ; Morse's Map of the

Northwest Coast, 393.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Conditions of 1790 ............... 398

Illustrations : Portrait of Brissot, 403 ; Ohio Flatboat, 412.

CHAPTER XIX.

Harmar's and St. Clair's Campaigns, 1790-1791 ...... 415

Illustration : Map of Moravian Settlements, 423.

CHAPTER XX.

The Northwest Tribes at Last Defeated, 1792-1794 .... 434 Illustrations : Map of Pittsburg and Wayne's Camp, 445 ; View of Niagara River, 449 ; Camp at Greenville, 452. 
   viii

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER XXI.

Jay's Treaty and the Territorial Integrity of the Northwest Secured, 1794-1796 ............. 462

Illustrations : Guthrie's Map of Lake Superior and the Grand Portage, 469 ; Pond's Map of the Source of the Mississippi, 471 ; Lewis's Map of the Genesee Country, 475.

CHAPTER XXII.

Wayne's Treaty and the New Northwest, 1794-1797 .... 485 Illustrations : Grants and Reservations in the Ohio Country, 489 ; Morse's Map of the Northwestern Territory, 492, 493 ; Scott's Northwest Territory, 494, 495 ; Ruf us Putnam's Map of Ohio, 496, 497 ; The Genesee Country, 499; The Mohawk and Wood Creek Route, 501 ; Map of the Lake Erie Route, 503 ; Scott's Northwest Territory, 505 ; Heckewelder's Map of the Allegliany and Big Beaver Rivers, 507 ; Map of Western Routes, 509 ; Collot's Map of Pittshurg and Wheeling, 510 ; Morse's Map of Pennsylvania, 513.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Unrest of the Southwest, 1791-1794 ........ 515

Illustrations : Map of the Tennessee Government, 517 ; The Chickasaw Country, 522 ; Map of Kentucky, 524, 525 ; Barker's Map of Kentucky, 527 ; Toulmin's Map of Kentucky, 529 ; Spanish Map of the Grand Portage, 534, 535 ; River of the West, 537 ; Map of the Tennessee Region, 545.

CHAPTER XXIV. Pinckney's Treaty and the Kentucky- Intrigue, 1795-1796 .   . 548

CHAPTER XXV.

The United States Completed, 1796-1798

558 
   THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

an introductory survey.

The public and secret treaties of 1763 left France without a foothold on the American main. By the terms of the Peace of Paris, the Bourbon flag fluttered in the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The suspicion of what lay beyond these little fishing stations at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had two centuries and a half before prompted the ambition of France to penetrate the continent by the great river of Canada. A century later her pioneers, following that current to its upper sources", had passed on to the Mississippi, which forms the central artery of the continent. Here, a third of the way across the land's broad expanse, and not suspecting the greater distance beyond, France had nurtured the hope of ascending the western affluents of that parent stream, till she had compassed, with her survey and jurisdiction, a greater France, stretching from the Alleghanies to the South Sea. This expectation had been dashed. Where she had counted upon seeing her royal standard shadowing soil and native alike, her flag was now seen drooping at a few posts beyond the Mississippi, and awaiting the demands of Spain to lower it.

During the period which followed the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), a scheme had often been broached among the English, but had never prospered, which looked to thwarting the policy of France in the Great Valley. This was to unite England and Spain in a movement to drive the French from the continent, and divide the northern parts of the New World between their respective crowns. This conjunction had now come to pass, but not by any such international pact. 
      2

AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY.

In the same treaty of 1763, Great Britain had acknowledged a limit to the western extension of her seaboard colonies by accepting the Mississippi River as a boundary of her American possessions. The Atlantic colonies, with their impracticable sea-to-sea charters, took no exception to such a reasonable curtailment of their western limits ; but when the king's proclamation followed, and the colonies found themselves confined to the seaward slope of the Appalachians, their western extension made crown territory to be given over to the uses of the Indians, and all attempts to occupy it forbidden,     there were signs of discontent which were easily linked with the resentment that defeated the Stamp Act. So the demand for a western existence was a part of the first pulsation of resistance to the mother country, and harbingered the American Revolution.

To keep the opposition, which had thus been raised, within bounds, and once more to apply a territorial check, the Quebec bill, in 1774, afforded one of the weighty charges, colored with current political rancor, which made up the Declaration of Independence. Britain had always denied that New France could cut athwart her colonial charters by any natural, geographical definition and extend to the Ohio and Mississippi; but in the Quebec bill it served her purpose to assume that Canada had of right that convenient extension.

In the war which ensued, Virginia took the lead which she had always taken in respect to this western region, and her expedition under George Rogers Clark rendered it easier for the American commissioners, who negotiated the treaty of 1782, to include this ample domain within the American union. In doing this they loyally defeated the intrigues of all the other parties to the general treaty,   Prance, whom in the earlier war, with England's help, the colonies had overcome ; England, from whom, with French assistance, they had gained their independence ; and Spain, whose insidious and vacillating policy they were yet further and successfully to combat. Each of these powers had hoped to curtail the ambition of the young Republic. Vergennes had succeeded in crippling England, but he feared the stalwart figure of the young nation born of England's misfortune. He was ready, if he could, to use England in her new complacency to cripple the youthful America.

The treaty of Independence was not so effective but that 
   AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY.

3

there soon followed other efforts to prevent for a while the rounding out of the Republic to its legitimate bounds. England, on the side of Canada, and Spain, on the side of Louisiana, sought to regain something they had lost. The retention by Great Britain of the lake posts, including as they hoped the lake front, though with some show of right, was disgraced by base intrigues with Kentucky. All her schemes were brought to an end by Jay in the treaty of 1794. The occupation of the eastern bank of the Mississippi from the Yazoo country, southward, by Spain, and the plotting of Miro with Wilkinson and his associates to establish a Spanish protectorate south of the Ohio, were defeated at last by the treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795.

Adding the tiriie which was necessary to carry out these treaties, it is now an even hundred years since the title of the United States to this vast region lying between the Appalachians, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi was unmistakably confirmed. For more than thirty years after the peace of 1763, the colonies and the Republic struggled to maintain the American spirit on this eastern-central area of the continent. Independence achieved, for twelve or fifteen years the United States strove to round out its territorial promise. The history of this western region during all these years was constantly moulded by its geography, and it is the purpose of the present volume to show the ever varying aspects of this struggle.

To establish what was called the Property Line was the first signal step taken in behalf of the seaboard to assert a right to enter upon this territory, and to that initiatory measure we devote the opening of the story. 
   CHAPTER II.

the property line.

1763-1764. -

Two years before the Treaty of Paris (1763), James Otis had argued in Boston against issuing "Writs of Assistance to detect evasions of the revenue. A service of law, which in England had been constantly accepted, aroused in an unwilling' people a rebellious spirit. How to restrain this threatening impulse was already a serious question ; and there was regret with some that Canada had not been left at the peace in French hands, to remain a menace to the colonies, and hold them dependent on England's protection.

The existence of this recalcitrant temper had been often cited in the arguments of those who preferred Guadaloupe to Canada in the settling the account with France. Lookers-on in the colonies, like Kalm, had perceived the force of this view. Choiseul saw it, and predicted the fatal outcome of England's final choice. Vergennes, chagrined at the drop in political influence which France had experienced, welcomed this hope of disaster to an ancient rival of France, which her sacrifice of Canada might produce.

Colden and others in the colonies were conscious that the loyal subjects of England must face new hazards when the British flag was hoisted at Quebec. This New Yorker represented to the Board of Trade in London that New England was the nursery of this threatening passion, and that it was necessary, if her republican hopes were to be chilled, to curtail the Yankees' bounds by extending New York to the Connecticut River. In September, 1764, word reached Albany that the king in council had stretched the jurisdiction of New York over what is now known as Vermont. Francis Bernard went farther. He not only urged this extension to the Connecticut, but he wished that the boundaries of the rest of New England should 
   THE FRENCH AND INDIAN.

5

be redistributed, in a sort of gerrymandering way, so as to insure a government majority in every part, and during 1766 and 1767 lie was in close correspondence with the home government on this point.

Murray, who had been appointed governor at Quebec in October, 1763, did not reach his post till August of the next year. It was not long before he was making reports to the home government which were startling on two points. One was that the British then in Canada " were the meanest and most immoral people he ever saw, while the [French] Canadians were frugal, industrious, and moral, and had become reconciled to the English rule." The report also anticipated the action which, ten years later, the daring of the seaboard colonies forced the English ministry to take in the Quebec bill. Murray's proposition was to annex the region lying beyond the Allegha-nies to Canada, as a means of overawing the older colonies. The gentleness of Murray with the Canadians was in rather painful contrast with Gage's plan of using them against the Indians. He advised Bradstreet (May 3, 1764) "to employ them in every service that can render them the most obnoxious to the Indians. Whatever is to be done most disagreeable to the Indians, let the Canadians have a large share in it. This will convince them, if anything will, how vain their hopes are of success from that quarter." If this policy was inspired by the home government, as well as another policy which was aimed at the repression of the natural subjects of the crown, one could well have predicted the later alliance of 1778.

A recent historian, in his Expansion of England, speaks of the prevalence in the mother country at this time of a " not unnatural bitterness," which accompanied the fear that Britain had enabled her colonies to- do without her. Seeley once again, writing of the century of English history from Louis XIV. to Napoleon, advises the English reader to recognize the fact that his country's real history during this interval was in the New World, where England successively fought France and her own colonies, in the effort to sustain her power. With this in mind, the student of British rule would not find, he adds, " that century of English history so uninteresting."

The fall of New France had produced sharp effects upon the 
   6

THE PROPERTY LINE.

relations of America and England. The war had increased the British debt by   350,000,000. The rights of the mother country, which affected the commerce and industry of her colonies, were at this time both brutal and mercenary. Viscount Bury says: " It may fairly be stated that the advantage reaped by a few shipowners from the operation of the navigation laws was purchased by an actual money expenditure of more than   200,000,000, in less than half a century." England was content to let the Americail pioneers break out the paths for a newer and perhaps greater Britain; but it was her policy first of all to make these plodders of the wilderness pay tribute to the stay-at-home merchant. That such injustice was according to law and precedent did not meet the questions which the Americans raised,     questions such as are constantly needing adjustment to newer environments.

The population in the seaboard colonies was doubling, as Franklin computed, in twenty-five years. The bonds of intercolonial sympathies were strengthening, and the designations of New Englander and Virginian were beginning to give place to American. With these conditions among the colonists, it was not unnatural that a proposition of the'ministry to tax them on a system repellent to colonial views created distrust. A period of doubt is always one of rumors. Bernard's plea for readjust-ino- the New England bounds made John Adams and others suspect that the British government intended to revoke the colonial charters and make the colonies royal provinces. The terms of the royal proclamation of 1763, which Gage received in New York on November 30, indicated, as already said, that under the new dispensation the westward extension of the colonies' bounds would be curtailed by the mountains, and the spaces of the Great Valley would be confirmed to savagery. There were further symptoms of this in the movement now going on in Pennsylvania to induce the king to recompense its proprietary and make it a royal domain. The king might indeed be preferable to a stubborn master.

If the heady motions of the ministry were without tact, there was some warrant for its belief that the colonies, despite acts of trade and navigation, were prosperous enough to share the burdens of the mother country. Maryland and Virginia were dispatching large shipments of wheat to England. Philadel- 
   THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763.

T

phia alone, the readiest port for shipping such products as came over the mountains, was now sending abroad four hundred vessels annually carrying exports to the value of   700,000. New England built and sent across the sea for sale fifty ships a year.

If such things indicated to the government a source of revenue, it was beginning to warn some observers that the colonies had it quite within their power to sustain a practical autonomy. When, in 1762, the ministry secured an uncompromising adherent in making William Franklin the governor of New Jersey, the act had no such effect upon his father, and it was not long before Benjamin Franklin was warning the ministry that " grievous tyranny and oppression " might drive his compatriots to revolt. The colonies had indeed struggled on, in facing the French, without cohesion; but injustice     and it mattered little whether it was real or imagined     was yet to bind them together, as the dangers of a common foe had never done.

The immediate struggle over the Stamp Act, which was closed by its repeal in 1766, produced for a time at least that political quiet which induces enterprise. The attention of the pioneers was again drawn to the western movement, and the humane spirit once again dwelt on the prohibition which the luckless proclamation of 1763 had put upon the ardent pioneer. Bouquet, falling in with the views of the ministry, was now urging that all grants west of the mountains should be annulled. This would include the abolishment of the Ohio Company, and would very closely affect the Virginia gentlemen.

It was also Bouquet's opinion that the policing of this western wilderness and the enforcement of the proclamation should be intrusted to the military. There was need of it. Since Governor Penn in June, 1765, had again opened the Indian trade by proclamation, the packmen had crossed the mountains, and a following of vagabonds was occasionally provoking the Indians to retaliate for the wrongs which were done them. Thus occasional scenes of devastation on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia were calling for mutual explanations between the white and the red man ; still the great body of the Indians had, since the close of Pontiac's war, ceased their havoc. The trouble was mainly with the whites. " I am really vexed," wrote Gage to Johnson (May 5, 1766), " at the behavior of the lawless banditti upon the borders ; and what aggravates the 
   8

THE PROPERTY LINE.

more is the difficulty to bring them to punishment." There was a limit to the Indian forbearance, but there were ten years yet to pass before the warwhoops of the Dunmore turmoil awoke the echoes of the Ohio woods.

During this interval the main dispute of the frontiers, between the home government and the natives, was how to protect the hunting-grounds of the tribes and at the same time give some scope to the ambition of the pioneer. Sir William Johnson, as Indian agent, had faced hard problems before ; but he never had a more difficult question than that which now confronted him. The French had indeed publicly withdrawn from the situation, but he could not divest himself of the belief that they were still exerting a clandestine influence, which was more difficult to deal with. A part of this influence lay in the experiences of the Indians with the French. " When I was in Canada," said Gage, " I could not find that the French had ever purchased land of the Indians,     only settled amongst them by permission and desire." Again he writes to Johnson, " We are plagued everywhere about lands. The French had never any dispute with the Indians about them, though they never purchased a single acre; and I believe the Indians have made difficulty with us because we have gone on a different plan."

Things had now come to such a pass on the frontier that Johnson saw the necessity of establishing some definite line of separation between the colonies and their Indian neighbors, and of maintaining it. When a savage said to him that the English always stole the Indian lands by the rum bottle, Johnson knew well all that it implied. With a purpose on each side, the one to sell and the other to buy, and with liquor as the bartering medium, nothing could shield the Indian from wrong. In order to make a beginning in the interests of right and to promote peace, Johnson dispatched George Croghan to England to sound the government on the project of such a line ; and while Croghan was there Johnson instructed him to memorialize the Board of Trade about the desirability of securing land south of the Ohio to satisfy the demands of the Ohio Company, and the claims of the soldiers enlisted by Dinwiddie in 1754, under a promise of land. Preliminary to this, and for the purpose of bringing the Indians to terms of mutual confidence 
   THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY.

9

among themselves, Johnson had exerted himself to make peace between the leading tribes of the North and South. The Virginians, as Gage wrote to Johnson some time before (March 3, 1766), were intent on such a plan, hoping thereby to prevent the Cherokees taking revenge on the Iroquois, for some murders committed by the young men of the latter. In December, 1767, three Cherokee chiefs presented themselves at Johnson Hall, on this errand. The Iroquois were summoned, and on March 4, 1768, the friendly pact between them was made.

The movement for this boundary settlement had in the start a greater impulse at the South than at the North. It had for some time devolved upon John Stuart, as the Indian agent for the southern colonies, to deal with the Cherokees in matters touching both the whites and the savages. He had brought about a conference at Augusta, where the Creeks had ceded some territory to Georgia " in proof of the sense they have of His Majesty's goodness in forgetting past offenses."

As it happened, the irresponsible conduct of the Carolina traders was rendering it necessary to act promptly, particularly if peace was to prevail among its tribes, since the whites always suffered in such times. The rivalry of the French had much conduced in the past to make the English liberal in their gratuities. That open rivalry failing, the generous habit of the English had slackened, and the Choctaws had not failed to remark upon it. The French at New Orleans used this neglect to point a moral for. the occasion.

The inroads of the whites upon the tribal territories had always been a source of alarm to the Indians, and Stuart had, in August, 1765, urged restraining them by a fixed line. We find, in 1766, that a deputation of Indians was in England, pleading with the government against the injustice of the colonists; and this may have had something to do with the repeated warnings which Stuart received in 1766 to avoid an Indian rupture. The instances of encroachment were cumulative, but the Indians took new alarm when these trespasses seemed to be made on a system, as was implied in the movement to extend the province bounds to the west. This purpose had been in part determined upon to protect the few settlers who were well within the 
   10

THE PROPERTY LINE.

Indian territory. The bounds of South Carolina had been already pushed upon the country of the Catawbas, and in April and May, 1766, there had been preliminary surveys towards the Cherokees; but in December, the running of the line had been postponed till the spring, and when completed it was not carried to the North Carolina limit.

Governor Tryon had succeeded Dobbs in the executive chair of North Carolina in 1764, and it fell to him to handle this question of bounds, as it did later some more serious questions. In February, 1767, Shelburne had advised him to deal tenderly with the Indians, for tidings had reached the ministry of what he thought unaccountable risks which the people of the back country were taking in their treatment of the Indians. On the 1st of June, Tryon met the Cherokees at Tyger River, and he had what was called " a straight and good talk" with them. There were mutual phrases of concession, and each confessed that it would be much easier to live in harmony, but for the " rogues " on either side. A line planned in October, 1765, was considered, and on June 13 it was agreed upon. This line, beginning at Reedy River, ran north to Tryon Mountain, which is described as being within three or four miles of the springs of the streams flowing towards the Mississippi. Thence the line ran to Chiswell Mines, and along the Blue Ridge, east of north, sixty or seventy miles. On July 16, the decision was made public, and all who had settled beyond were warned to withdraw by New Year's of 1768. It was further determined that no grants should be made reaching within a mile of the line.

There was still the region back of Virginia and extending to the Ohio, which it was even more necessary to bring under control. Hillsborough had instructed Stuart to force the Cherokees, who were the main southern claimants of this region, to an agreement. This agent met the tribe at Hardlabor, S. C, on October 14, 1768. These Indians professed to hold the territory east and north of the Cherokee [Tennessee] River     their usual route to the Mississippi     as a hunting-ground, but were content to yield all east of the Kanawha, from its mouth upwards, and on this basis the treaty was made. This decision was approved by the Board of Trade and recommended to the king.   This was necessary, as it threw open to the pioneers 
   THE VIRGINIANS.

11

the valley of the Greenbrier and other eastern affluents of the Kanawha on the west of the Atlantic divide, and was thus at variance with the royal proclamation. It was at once so far established as a " ministerial line " that Hillsborough included it in the prohibition which he had attached in April to the line farther south, when he warned all who should transgress by passing it. fie had already informed Stuart that the king would never consent to new grants below the Kanawha, and might recall some already made. This meant much, for the king's " friends," under Grafton, had come into power, and it seemed they were to be his thralls, not his advisers.

This definition of bounds by the Kanawha was only less offensive to Virginia than the proclamation of 1763 had been, for it was still a virtual curtailment of her territorial pretensions. Washington and others interested in the Ohio Company had looked upon the proclamation as simply an ostensible show of words for satisfying the Indians without really abridging the rights of the colony. A pact of the government with the Indians, as the Hardlabor agreement had been, was somewhat more serious, and it was not long, as we shall see, before this difficulty was almost entirely removed.

There was among the colonists of the Old Dominion a marked difference of character between the tide-water people and those who had crossed the mountains, or had entered the Shenandoah Valley from the north. Burnaby, who had traversed the colony a few years before, had found " a spirit of enterprise by no means the turn of Virginia : " but he derived his opinion from his intercourse with the large landed proprietors near the Atlantic rivers. These found nothing more exciting than their Christmas revelries, their hunts in the wilderness, their county politics, and their annual shipments of tobacco at the river fronts of their plantations. They showed little disposition to develop the country away from their own neighborhoods. While, however, this was true of most of the gentlemen of the lower country, there were a few among them quite ready, as we shall see, to act in the faith which Burnaby shows he imbibed, when he speaks of the Potomac as a water-way to the great divide, and " of as great consequence as any river in America."

But the development of the frontiers of Virginia was not 
   12

THE P