given the British, and threatening them with a bloody chastisement if they would not keep the peace. [Footnote:  State Department MSS.  Letters of Washington, No. 152, Vol.  XI., Feb.  I, 1782.] A threat from Mad Anthony meant something, and the Indians paid at least momentary heed.  Georgia enjoyed a short respite, which, as usual, the more reckless borderers strove to bring to an end by encroaching on the Indian lands, while the State authorities, on the other hand, did their best to stop not only such encroachments, but also all travelling and hunting in the Indian country, and especially the marking of trees.  This last operation, as Governor Lyman Hall remarked in his proclamation, gave “Great Offence to the Indians,” [Footnote:  Gazette of the State of Georgia, July 10. 1783.] who thoroughly understood that the surveys indicated the approaching confiscation of their territory.

Towards the end of 1783 a definite peace was concluded with the Chickasaws, who ever afterwards remained friendly [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, III., p. 548.]; but the Creeks, while amusing the Georgians by pretending to treat, let their parties of young braves find an outlet for their energies by assailing the Holston and Cumberland settlements. [Footnote:  Do., p. 532.] The North Carolina Legislature, becoming impatient, passed a law summarily appropriating certain lands that were claimed by the unfortunate Cherokees.  The troubled peace was continually threatened by the actions either of ungovernable frontiersmen or of bloodthirsty and vindictive Indians. [Footnote:  Do., p. 560.] Small parties of scouts were incessantly employed in patrolling the southern border.

    Growth of the Settlements.

Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the Indians was over.  The Holston settlements throve lustily.  Wagon roads were made, leading into both Virginia and North Carolina.  Settlers thronged into the country, the roads were well travelled, and the clearings became very numerous.  The villages began to feel safe without stockades, save those on the extreme border, which were still built in the usual frontier style.  The scattering log school-houses and meeting-houses increased steadily in numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to become the leading and typical creed of the west, first gained a foothold along the Holston, with a congregation of seventy-six members. [Footnote:  “History of Methodism in Tennessee,” John B. M’Ferrin (Nashville, 1873), I., 26.]

These people of the upper Tennessee valleys long continued one in interest as in blood.  Whether they lived north or south of the Virginia or North Carolina boundary, they were more closely united to one another than they were to the seaboard governments of which they formed part.  Their history is not generally studied as a whole, because one portion of their territory continued part of Virginia, while the remainder was cut off from North Carolina as the nucleus of a separate