He was a prominent politician in North Carolina, and afterwards for many years agent among the Southern Indians.

He had been concerned in several of the treaties.

He warned Blount that since the treaty of Hopewell the whites, and not the Indians, had been the aggressors; and also warned him not to try to get too much land from the Indians, or to take away too great an extent of their hunting grounds, which would only help the great land companies, but to be content with the thirty-fifth parallel for a southern boundary.

[Footnote: Blount MSS., Hawkins to Blount, March 10, 1791.] Blount paid much heed to this advice, and by the treaty of Holston he obtained from the Indians little more than what the tribes had previously granted; except that they confirmed to the whites the country upon which the pioneers were already settled.

The Cumberland district had already been granted over and over again by the Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the North Carolinians and to the United States.