Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/287

 forests abound; in a few years it will probably form a county, containing at this time about 60 families, all, in regard to circumstances, living in a state of ignorance and mediocrity of fortune: many of them indeed were renegadoes from justice who had fled from honest society, to seek refuge in these fertile alluvial forests, where, indulging themselves in indolence, they become the pest of their more industrious and honest neighbours, and are encouraged in their dishonest practices by the laxity of the laws, and {215} the imperfect manner in which they are administered. Thus the settlement was now oppressed by gangs of horse thieves, who carried their depredations even among the neighbouring savages.

The soil throughout this settlement, after three or four years working, is found to be extremely favourable for the growth of cotton, as appeared by the crops of the present year, but the price was fallen to 3 dollars per cwt. in the seed, with little or no demand, so that the settlers, for want of a market, were really indigent, and most of them lived in a very poor and uncomfortable manner. The alluvial lands, here about two miles wide, are flanked by a range of wooded hills, and a somewhat broken country of considerable fertility.

A number of families were now about to settle, or rather take provisionary possession of the land purchased from the Osages, situated along the banks of the Arkansa, from Frog bayou to the falls of the Verdigris; a tract in which is embraced a great body of superior alluvial land. But, to their disappointment, an order recently arrived, instructing the agent of Indian affairs to put the Cherokees in possession of the Osage purchase, and to remove them from the south side of the river. It appeared, from what I could learn, that the Osages, purposely deceived by the