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During this period, Peter Duree, the elder, the principal man of the connection, determined to settle a new fort between Estill's station and the mouth of Muddy Creek, directly on the trace between the Cherokee and Shawnese towns.
A treaty concluded on the 29th day of September, 1817, at the foot of the Rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie, between Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur, commissioners of the United States, and the sachems, chiefs, and warriors of the Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware, Shawnese, Potawatamies, Ottawas, and Chippewa tribes of Indians.
Shawnese Indians had formerly lived on the Cumberland river, and French traders had been among them, as well as along the Mississippi; but by the time of the English traders, Tennessee and Kentucky were for the most part uninhabited. The Virginia traders reached the Catawbas, and for a time the Cherokees, by a trading route through the southwest of the colony to the Santee.
Learning from the return of some of the prisoners, captured at the Blue Licks, the great blow which the Shawnese meditated against this station, he deemed it advisable to anticipate their movements, and to fit out an expedition to meet them on their own ground. Leaving twenty young men to defend the place, he marched with thirty chosen men towards the Shawnese towns.
To the Senate: I transmit herewith to the Senate, for their advice and consent as to the ratification of the same, a treaty recently concluded between the commissioners for adjusting all differences with the Indians west of the Mississippi and the mixed band of Shawnese and Senecas who emigrated from Ohio. I transmit also the journal of their proceedings. WASHINGTON, February 15, 1833.
The Shawnese then wave large fans of eagles' tails, and conclude with a dance. The stranger warriors, who have come to receive the peace, select half a dozen of their most active young men, surmounting their crowns with swan's feathers, and painting their bodies with white clay. They then place their file leader on the consecrated seat of what imports in their language, the "beloved cabin."
This bird is called in the Shawnese dialect by a name importing "kind messenger," which they deem always a true omen, whenever it appears, of bad news. They are exceedingly intimidated whenever this bird sings near them; and were it to perch and sing over their war-camp, the whole party would instantly disperse in consternation and dismay.
Those Indians who are active against us, are the Six Nations, part of the Shawnese, the Meamonies, and about half the Chesaweys, Ottawas, Jowaas, and Pottawatimas nations, bordering on the lakes.
Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.
Various Indian tribes, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.
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