As became brothers in science, they had exchanged notes, so we gather from Adair's references to conversations and correspondence.

Adair's difficulties as an author, however, had been increased by a treacherous lapse from professional etiquette on the part of the Secretary: "He told them [the Indians] that in the very same manner as he was their great Secretary, I was the devil's clerk, or an accursed one who marked on paper the bad speech of the evil ones of darkness." On his own part Adair admits that his object in this correspondence was to trap the Secretary into something more serious than literary errata.

That is, he admits it by implication; he says the Secretary "feared" it.

During the years of their duel, Adair apparently knew that the scholarly compiler of the Cherokee dictionary was secretly inciting members of this particular Lost Tribe to tomahawk the discoverer of their biblical origin; and Priber, it would seem, knew that he knew! Adair shows, inferentially, that land encroachment was not the sole cause of those Indian wars with which we shall deal in a later chapter.
The earliest causes were the instigations of the French and the rewards which they offered for English scalps.

But equally provocative of Indian rancor were the acts of sometimes merely stupid, sometimes dishonest, officials; the worst of these, Adair considered, was the cheapening of the trade through the granting of general licenses.
"Formerly each trader had a license for two [Indian] towns....