to get them to adhere to the principles of order and to support the laws by his influence in a way which it was hopeless to expect from their own respect for governmental authority.  Blount was felt by the frontiersmen to be thoroughly in sympathy with them, to understand and appreciate them, and to be heartily anxious for their welfare; and yet at the same time his influence could be counted upon on the side of order, while the majority of the frontier officials in any time of commotion were apt to remain silent and inactive, or even to express their sympathy with the disorderly element. [Footnote:  American State Papers, iv.; Daniel Smith to the Secretary of War, Knoxville, July 19, 1793.]

    Blount’s Tact in Dealing with Difficulties.

No one but a man of great tact and firmness could have preserved as much order among the frontiersmen as Blount preserved.  He was always under fire from both sides.  The settlers were continually complaining that they were deserted by the Federal authorities, who favored the Indians, and that Blount himself did not take sufficiently active steps to subdue the savages; while on the other hand the National Administration was continually upbraiding him for being too active against the Indians, and for not keeping the frontiersmen sufficiently peaceable.  Under much temptations, and in a situation that would have bewildered any one, Blount steadfastly followed his course of, on the one hand, striving his best to protect the people over whom he was placed as governor, and to repel the savages, while, on the other hand, he suppressed so far as lay in his power, any outbreak against the authorities, and tried to inculcate a feeling of loyalty and respect for the National Government. [Footnote:  Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Feb. 13, 1793.] He did much in creating a strong feeling of attachment to the Union among the rough backwoodsmen with whom he had thrown in his lot.

    Treaty of Holston with the Cherokees.

Early in 1791 Blount entered into negotiations with the Cherokees, and when the weather grew warm, he summoned them to a treaty.  They met on the Holston, all of the noted Cherokee chiefs and hundreds of their warriors being present, and concluded the treaty of Holston, by which, in consideration of numerous gifts and of an annuity of a thousand (afterwards increased to fifteen hundred) dollars, the Cherokees at last definitely abandoned their disputed claims to the various tracts of land which the whites claimed under various former treaties.  By this treaty with the Cherokees, and by the treaty with the Creeks entered into at New York the previous summer, the Indian title to most of the present State of Tennessee, was fairly and legally extinguished.  However the westernmost part, was still held by the Chickasaws, and certain tracts in the southeast, by the Cherokees; while the Indian hunting grounds in the middle of the territory were thrust in between the groups of settlements on the Cumberland and the Holston.