Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/41

Rh much more difficult, because the roving war-parties had not been in any wise dispossessed or reduced in numbers, and made their periodical returns as of old. The only difference, apparently, was that instead of tribe slaughtering tribe in their predatory incursions they all now fell upon the white man. It was an anomalous state of affairs, and it is probable that the Virginia authorities did not fully comprehend the situation. A somewhat analogous experience had fallen to the lot of the settlers in the region west of the mountains at the head-waters of the New, Holston, and other rivers, known collectively as "the Western Waters," which became the counties of Washington, Fincastle, Bottetourt, and so forth, during the war period, who were the victims of frequent raids from the Cherokee towns' just within the depths of the wilderness. But the Indians were then under the manipulation of British and Tory agents, and at other times rarely proved the aggressors. Here the Indians made dash after dash and harried the settlers sadly. The only remedy was to be found in retaliation, and the arrangement of the militia under Virginia's laws made this most difficult. The governors disapproved of it, and the federal war department made more than one complaint of these expeditions as stirring up trouble and violating treaties. The Kentuckians were in the grasp of a necessity that knew no law, and Colonel Benjamin Logan invited a number of militia officers to an informal conference at Danville in the summer of 1784. Those present