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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from John Stuart to Josiah Martin
Stuart, John, 1718-1779
February 22, 1774
Volume 09, Pages 825-826

[From MS. Records in Office of Secretary of State.]
Letter from John Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to Governor Martin.


Charles Town 22nd February 1774.

Sir,

I have the pleasure to acquaint your Excellency that since my last to you of 8th instant, I have received Letters from my deputies in the Creek and Cherokee nations, from which I am induced to hope that matters may still be accommodated with the Creek Indians who seem disposed to give satisfaction for the murders lately committed by them. There has been no less than fifteen white Inhabitants and two negroes murdered in Georgia and three white men in West Florida since October last. The Headmen of the Creek nation are mostly all out a hunting and at war against the Choctaws. Those who are at home seem very sorry for what has happened and have sent out to call the others in on purpose to have a general meeting to consult upon giving satisfaction for the different murders which have been committed contrary to the sense of the nation by a stragling Banditti who have separated themselves from the nation and by that means are not subject to any authority. They consist of only seventeen Indians.

I have likewise received a Message from the Cherokee Indians of 4th instant expressing the strongest attachment to His Majesty's white subjects, and their present pacifick disposition, with their disapprobation of the late conduct of the Creek Indians towards us. That nation is still extreamly uneasy at the encroachments of the

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white people on their hunting Grounds at Wataga River, where a very large Settlement is formed upwards of fifty miles beyond the established Boundary, and as I am apprehensive that it consists of Emigrants from your province to which it is contiguous I must beg your Excellency's Interposition to endeavour to prevail on them to remove otherwise the consequences may in a little time prove very fatal. I have in the mean time ordered an Interpreter with a party of principal Indians to warn them to remove within a certain time, and should they then neglect to move off, I am much afraid it will be impossible to restrain the Indians from taking redress themselves by robbing and perhaps murdering some of them.

What further intelligence I receive from the Creek nation respecting the disposition of the Indians shall be communicated, in the mean time the Frontiers continue much alarmed and the Inhabitants are daily deserting their habitations and those who remain making stockades for their safety and defence.

I am Sir &c.,
WILLIAM OGILVY
for John Stuart Esqr.

P.S. Mr Stuart is so excessively ill of the Gout that he cannot even sign his name.