At this time Adair was trading with
the Cherokees. He relates that Priber,
"more effectually to answer the design of his commission...ate,
drank, slept, danced, dressed, and painted himself with the
Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the
natives,--he married also with them, and being endued with a
strong understanding and retentive memory he soon learned their
dialect, and by gradual advances impressed them with a very ill
opinion of the English, representing them as fraudulent,
avaritious and encroaching people; he at the same time inflated
the artless savages with a prodigious high opinion of their own
importance in the American scale of power.... Having thus
infected them...he easily formed them into a nominal
republican government--crowned their old Archimagus emperor after
a pleasing new savage form, and invented a variety of
high-sounding titles for all the members of his imperial
majesty's red court."
Priber cemented the Cherokee empire "by slow but sure degrees to
the very great danger of our southern colonies." His position was
that of Secretary of State and as such, with a studiedly
provocative arrogance, he carried on correspondence with the
British authorities. The colonial Government seems, on this
occasion, to have listened to the traders and to have realized
that Priber was a danger, for soldiers were sent to take him
prisoner.
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