employed Mr Vaughan as a packman, to transport their goods. West of
Amelia County, the country was then thinly inhabited; the last hunter's
cabin that he saw was on Otter River, a branch of the Staunton, now in
Bedford County, Va. The route pursued was along the Great Path to the
centre of the Cherokee nation. The traders and pack-men generally
confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee
River, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee villages
west of the mountain, continued their traffic as low down the Great
Tennessee as the Indian settlements upon Occochappo or Bear Creek, below
the Muscle Shoals, and there encountered the competition of other
traders, who were supplied from New Orleans and Mobile. They returned
heavily laden with peltries, to Charleston, or the more northern
markets, where they were sold at highly remunerating prices. A hatchet,
a pocket looking-glass, a piece of scarlet cloth, a trinket, and other
articles of little value, which at Williamsburg could be bought for a
few shillings, would command from an Indian hunter on the Hiwasse or
Tennessee peltries amounting in value to double the number of pounds
sterling. Exchanges were necessarily slow, but the profits realized from
the operation were immensely large. In times of peace this traffic
attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It became mutually
advantageous to the Indian not less than to the white man. The trap and
the rifle, thus bartered for, procured, in one day, more game to the
Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his dead-fall would have
secured during a month of toilsome hunting. Other advantages resulted
from it to the whites. They became thus acquainted with the great
avenues leading through the hunting grounds and to the occupied country
of the neighboring tribes--an important circumstance in the condition of
either war or peace. Further, the traders were an exact thermometer of
the pacific or hostile intention and feelings of the Indians with whom
they traded. Generally, they were foreigners, most frequently Scotchmen,