Before noon on the sixth day, they arrived precisely at the upper fork of the Broad River. The Indians celebrated and jeered at the British surveyors, who, at first, were in a quandary about what had happened. Then they realized that the compass had, indeed, been correct, but their maps had been wrong. The headwaters of the Broad River and its tributary streams were several miles eastward of where they had been expected.

The promised gifts were delivered to the chiefs, and that evening a peace pipe and a few cups of rum were passed around. The next morning the Indians and survey team prepared to proceed directly eastward to the Savannah River, as prescribed in the text of the treaty. But Bartram, having seen enough of this region, decided to follow the Broad River more southward, which would bring him to Augusta almost two weeks early. Newota, eager to return home, was delighted with this decision.

The group proceeded down the Broad and Savannah rivers to the mouth of the Little River, where Newota was paid for his services and he and Kindred proceeded back to their homes, while the scientific party returned to Augusta and then Savannah.

BOOK II

1774–1777

CHAPTER 14

Stirrings of a Conflict

The Pratts and Morrises were still getting along well as neighbors, but they had something of an argument when the new treaty opened up lands farther to the north and west and extended all the way to the Oconee River. Ethan was eager to dispose of some of their present holdings and expand across the river, but the other three adults preferred to stay where they were, in an area that had come to be called Sweetwater, about six miles northwest of Wrightsborough. Ethan was determined to allow for his son’s future, but finally compromised by putting in for additional grazing rights, bringing both families up to the maximum acreage permitted under the old head-right system. Their new property was in the rolling hills just west of their first farms, still in the area that drained into Briar Creek. They only had to pay the survey fees, plus three shillings an acre for their new land. With Governor James Wright and his council in charge, there was little speculation or fraud, quite different from what the Pratts had known in North Carolina. They and the Morrises helped each other clear some land and erect fences to hold the growing herd of cows and the hogs they had accumulated.