163.] They both greedily coveted the Indians' land, and were bent on driving the Indians off it.

[Footnote: Va.

State Papers, IV., pp.

256, 353.

Many of the rumors of defeats and victories given in these papers were without foundation.] The Franklin Men and the Indians.
One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for the independence of his state to the Governor of North Carolina, expressed with unusual frankness the attitude of the Holston backwoodsmen towards the Indians.
He remarked that he supposed the Governor would be astonished to learn that there were many settlers on the land which North Carolina had by treaty guaranteed to the Cherokees; and brushed aside all remonstrances by simply saying that it was vain to talk of keeping the frontiersmen from encroaching on Indian territory.