625; McGillivray's Letter of April 15, 1788.] Writing again at the end of the year, he reiterated his assurances of the peaceful inclinations of the Creeks, though their troubles with Georgia were still unsettled.

[Footnote: Robertson MSS.
McGillivray to Robertson, December 1, 1788.

This letter contains the cautious, non-committal answer to Robertson's letter in which the latter proposed that Cumberland should be put under Spanish protection; the letter itself McGillivray had forwarded to the Spaniards.] Continuance of the Ravages.
Nevertheless these peaceful protestations produced absolutely no effect upon the Indian ravages, which continued with unabated fury.

Many instances of revolting brutality and aggression by the whites against the Cherokees took place in Tennessee, both earlier and later than this, and in eastern Tennessee at this very time; but the Cumberland people, from the earliest days of their settlement, had not sinned against the red men, while as regards all the Tennesseans, the Creeks throughout this period appeared always, and the Cherokees appeared sometimes, as the wrong-doers, the men who began the long and ferocious wars of reprisal.
Death of Bledsoe.
Robertson's companion, Bledsoe, was among the many settlers who suffered death in the summer of 1788.

He was roused from sleep by the sound of his cattle running across the yard in front of the twin log-houses occupied by himself and his brother and their families.