University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VI

CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES

GOVERNOR LYTTELTON'S treaty
of "peace," negotiated with the Cherokees
at the close of 1759, was worse than a
crime: it was a crass and hideous blunder.
His domineering attitude and tyrannical treatment
of these Indians had aroused the bitterest
animosity. Yet he did not realize that it was
no longer safe to trust their word. No sooner
did the governor withdraw his army from the
borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose passions
had been inflamed by what may fairly be
called the treacherous conduct of Lyttelton,
rushed down with merciless ferocity upon the

innocent and defenseless families on the frontier.
On February 1, 1760, while a large party
(including the family of Patrick Calhoun),
numbering in all about one hundred and fifty
persons, were removing from the Long Cane
settlement to Augusta, they were suddenly
attacked by a hundred mounted Cherokees,
who slaughtered about fifty of them. After
the massacre, many of the children were found
helplessly wandering in the woods. One man
alone carried to Augusta no less than nine of
the pitiful innocents, some horribly mutilated
with the tomahawk, others scalped, and all yet
alive.

Atrocities defying description continued to
be committed, and many people were slain.
The Cherokees, under the leadership of Silou-ee,
or the Young Warrior of Estatoe, the
Round O, Tiftoe, and others, were baffled in
their persistent efforts to capture Fort Prince
George. On February 16th the crafty Oconostota
appeared before the fort and under the
pretext of desiring some white man to accompany
him on a visit to the governor on urgent

business, lured the commander, Lieutenant
Coytomore, and two attendants to a conference
outside the gates. At a preconceived signal
a volley of shots rang out; the two attendants
were wounded, and Lieutenant Coytomore,
riddled with bullets, fell dead. Enraged
by this act of treachery, the garrison put
to death the Indian hostages within. During
the abortive attack upon the fort, Oconostota,
unaware of the murder of the hostages,
was heard shouting above the din of
battle: "Fight strong, and you shall be relieved."[1]

Now began the dark days along the Rowan
border, which were so sorely to test human endurance.
Many refugees fortified themselves
in the different stockades; and Colonel Hugh
Waddell with his redoubtable frontier company
of Indian-fighters awaited the onslaught
of the savages, who were reported to have
passed through the mountain defiles and to be
approaching along the foot-hills. The story of
the investment of Fort Dobbs and the splendidly
daring sortie of Waddell and Bailey is

best told in Waddell's report to Governor
Dobbs (February 29, 1760):

Alarmed by Waddell's "offensive-defensive,"
the Indians abandoned the siege. Robert
Campbell, Waddell's ranger, who was
scalped in this engagement, subsequently recovered
from his wounds and was recompensed
by the colony with the sum of twenty pounds.[3]

In addition to the frontier militia, four independent
companies were now placed under
Waddell's command. Companies of volunteers
scoured the woods in search of the lurking
Indian foe. These rangers, who were clad in
hunting-shirts and buckskin leggings, and who

employed Indian tactics in fighting, were captained
by such hardy leaders as the veteran
Morgan Bryan, the intrepid Griffith Rutherford,
the German partisan, Martin Phifer
(Pfeiffer), and Anthony Hampton, the father
of General Wade Hampton. They visited
periodically a chain of "forest castles" erected
by the settlers—extending all the way from
For Dobbs and the Moravian fortifications in
the Wachau to Samuel Stalnaker's stockade
on the Middle Fork of the Holston in Virginia.
About the middle of March, thirty
volunteer Rowan County rangers encountered
a band of forty Cherokees, who fortified themselves
in a deserted house near the Catawba
River. The famous scout and hunter, John
Perkins, assisted by one of his bolder companions,
crept up to the house and flung
lighted torches upon the roof. One of the Indians,
as the smoke became suffocating and
the flames burned hotter, exclaimed: "Better
for one to die bravely than for all to perish
miserably in the flames," and darting forth,
dashed rapidly hither and thither, in order to
draw as many shots as possible. This act of
superb self-sacrifice was successful; and while
the rifles of the whites, who riddled the brave
Indian with balls, were empty, the other savages
made a wild dash for liberty. Seven fell
thus under the deadly rain of bullets; but many
escaped. Ten of the Indians, all told, lost
their scalps, for which the volunteer rangers
were subsequently paid one hundred pounds
by the colony of North Carolina.[4]

Beaten back from Fort Dobbs, sorely defeated
along the Catawba, hotly pursued by
the rangers, the Cherokees continued to lurk
in the shadows of the dense forests, and at
every opportunity to fall suddenly upon wayfaring
settlers and isolated cabins remote from
any stronghold. On March 8th William Fish,
his son, and Thompson, a companion, were
riding along the "trace," in search of provisions
for a group of families fortified on the
Yadkin, when a flight of arrows hurtled from
the cane-brake, and Fish and his son fell dead.
Although pierced with two arrows, one in the
hip and one clean through his body, Thompson

escaped upon his fleet horse; and after a
night of ghastly suffering finally reached the
Carolina Fort at Bethabara. The good Dr.
Bonn, by skilfully extracting the barbed
shafts from his body, saved Thompson's life.
The pious Moravians rejoiced over the recovery
of the brave messenger, whose sensational
arrival gave them timely warning of the close
proximity of the Indians. While feeding
their cattle, settlers were shot from ambush
by the lurking foe; and on March 11th, a family
barricaded within a burning house, which
they were defending with desperate courage,
were rescued in the nick of time by the militia.
No episode from Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking
Tales surpasses in melancholy interest
Harry Hicks's heroic defense of his little
fort on Bean Island Creek. Surrounded by
the Indians, Hicks and his family took refuge
within the small outer palisade around his
humble home. Fighting desperately against
terrific odds, he was finally driven from his
yard into his log cabin, which he continued
to defend with dauntless courage. With
every shot he tried to send a redskin to the
happy hunting-grounds; and it was only after
his powder was exhausted that he fell, fighting
to the last, beneath the deadly tomahawk. So
impressed were the Indians by his bravery that
they spared the life of his wife and his little
son; and these were afterward rescued by
Waddell when he marched to the Cherokee
towns in 1761.[5]

The kindly Moravians had always entertained
with generous hospitality the roving
bands of Cherokees, who accordingly held
them in much esteem and spoke of Bethabara
as "the Dutch Fort, where there are good people
and much bread." But now, in these
dread days, the truth of their daily text was
brought forcibly home to the Moravians:
"Neither Nehemiah nor his brethren put off
their clothes, but prayed as they watched."
With Bible in one hand and rifle in the other,
the inhabitant of Wachovia sternly marched
to religious worship. No Puritan of bleak
New England ever showed more resolute courage
or greater will to defend the hard-won

outpost of civilization than did the pious Moravian
of the Wachau. At the new settlement
of Bethania on Easter Day, more than four
hundred souls, including sixty rangers, listened
devoutly to the eloquent sermon of Bishop
Spangenberg concerning the way of salvation
—the while their arms, stacked without the
Gemein Haus, were guarded by the watchful
sentinel. On March 14th the watchmen at
Bethania with well-aimed shots repelled the
Indians, whose hideous yells of baffled rage
sounded down the wind like "the howling of
a hundred wolves." Religion was no protection
against the savages; for three ministers
journeying to the present site of Salem were
set upon by the red men—one escaping, another
suffering capture, and the third, a Baptist,
losing his life. A little later word came
to Fort Dobbs that John Long and Robert
Gillespie of Salisbury had been shot from ambush
and scalped—Long having been pierced
with eight bullets and Gillespie with seven.[6]

There is one beautiful incident recorded by
the Moravians, which has a truly symbolic significance.

While the war was at its height,
a strong party of Cherokees, who had lost their
chief, planned in retaliation to attack Bethabara.
"When they went home," sets forth
the Moravian Diary, "they said they had been
to a great town, where there were a great many
people, where the bells rang often, and during
the night, time after time, a horn was blown,
so that they feared to attack the town and
had taken no prisoners." The trumpet of the
watchman, announcing the passing of the hour,
had convinced the Indians that their plans for
attack were discovered; and the regular evening
bell, summoning the pious to prayer, rang
in the stricken ears of the red men like the
clamant call to arms.

Following the retirement from office of Governor
Lyttelton, Lieutenant-Governor Bull
proceeded to prosecute the war with vigor.
On April 1, 1760, twelve hundred men under
Colonel Archibald Montgomerie arrived at
Charleston, with instructions to strike an immediate
blow and to relieve Fort Loudon, then
invested by the Cherokees. With his own

COLONEL ARCHIBALD MONTGOMERIE (1726-1796)

Mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds after the original painting by
C. F. v. Breda

force, two hundred and ninety-five South
Carolina Rangers, forty picked men of the
new "levies," and "a good number of guides,"
Montgomerie moved from Fort Ninety-Six on
May 28th. On the first of June, crossing
Twelve-Mile River, Montgomerie began the
campaign in earnest, devastating and burning
every Indian village in the Valley of Keowee,
killing and capturing more than a hundred of
the Cherokees, and destroying immense stores
of corn. Receiving no reply to his summons
to the Cherokees of the Middle and Upper
Towns to make peace or suffer like treatment,
Montgomerie took up his march from Fort
Prince George on June 24th, resolved to carry
out his threat. On the morning of the 27th,
he was drawn into an ambuscade within six
miles of Et-chow-ee, eight miles south of the
present Franklin, North Carolina, a mile and
a half below Smith's Bridge, and was vigorously
attacked from dense cover by some six
hundred and thirty warriors led by Si-lou-ee.
Fighting with Indian tactics, the Provincial
Rangers under Patrick Calhoun particularly
distinguished themselves; and the blood-curdling
yells of the painted savages were responded
to by the wild huzzas of the kilted
Highlanders who, waving their Scotch bonnets,
impetuously charged the redskins and
drove them again and again from their lurking-places.
Nevertheless Montgomerie lost
from eighty to one hundred in killed and
wounded, while the loss of the Indians was
supposed to be about half the loss of the whites.
Unable to care for his wounded and lacking
the means of removing his baggage, Montgomerie
silently withdrew his forces. In so doing,
he acknowledged defeat, since he was compelled
to abandon his original intention of relieving
the beleaguered garrison of Fort Loudon.

Captain Demere and his devoted little band,
who had been resolutely holding out, were now
left to their tragic fate. After the bread was
exhausted, the garrison was reduced to the
necessity of eating dogs and horses; and the
loyal aid of the Indian wives of some of the
garrison, who secretly brought them supplies

of food daily, enabled them to hold out still
longer. Realizing at last the futility of prolonging
the hopeless contest, Captain Demere
surrendered the fort on August 8, 1760. At
daylight the next morning, while on the march
to Fort Prince George, the soldiers were set
upon by the treacherous Cherokees, who at
the first onset killed Captain Demere and
twenty-nine others. A humane chieftain,
Outassitus, says one of the gazettes of the day,
"went around the field calling upon the Indians
to desist, and making such representations
to them as stopped the further progress
and effects of their barbarous and brutal rage,"
which expressed itself in scalping and hacking
off the arms and legs of the defenseless whites.
Atta-kulla-kulla, who was friendly to the
whites, claimed Captain Stuart, the second
officer, as his captive, and bore him away by
stealth. After nine days' journey through
the wilderness they encountered an advance
party under Major Andrew Lewis, sent out
by Colonel Byrd, head of a relieving army,
to rescue and succor any of the garrison who
might effect their escape. Thus Stuart was
restored to his friends. This abortive and
tragic campaign, in which the victory lay conclusively
with the Indians, ended when Byrd
disbanded his new levies and Montgomerie
sailed from Charleston for the north (August,
1760).

During the remainder of the year, the province
of North Carolina remained free of further
alarms from the Indians. But the view
was generally entertained that one more joint
effort of North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Virginia would have to be made in order to
humble the Cherokees. At the sessions of the
North Carolina Assembly in November and
again in December, matters in dispute between
Governor Dobbs and the representatives of the
people made impossible the passage of a proposed
aid bill, providing for five hundred men
to coöperate with Virginia and South Carolina.
Nevertheless volunteers in large numbers
patriotically marched from North Carolina
to Charleston and the Congaree (December,
1760, to April, 1761), to enlist in the famous

COLONEL JAMES GRANT (1720-1806)

From I. Kay's Original Portraits (1798)

regiment being organized by Colonel
Thomas Middleton.[7] On March 31, 1761,
Governor Dobbs called together the Assembly
to act upon a letter received from General
Amherst, outlining a more vigorous plan of
campaign appropriate to the succession of a
young and vigorous sovereign, George III.
An aid bill was passed, providing twenty thousand
pounds for men and supplies; and one
regiment of five companies of one hundred men
each, under the command of Colonel Hugh
Waddell, was mustered into service for seven
months' duty, beginning May 1, 1761.[8]

On July 7, 1761, Colonel James Grant, detached
from the main army in command of a
force of twenty-six hundred men, took up his
march from Fort Prince George. Attacked
on June 10th two miles south of the spot where
Montgomerie was engaged the preceding year,
Grant's army, after a vigorous engagement
lasting several hours, drove off the Indians.
The army then proceeded at leisure to lay
waste the fifteen towns of the Middle Settlements;
and, after this work of systematic devastation

was over, returned to Fort Prince
George. Peace was concluded in September
as the result of this campaign; and in consequence
the frontier was pushed seventy miles
farther to the west.

Meantime, Colonel Waddell with his force
of five hundred North Carolinians had acted
in concert with Colonel William Byrd, commanding
the Virginia detachment. The combined
forces went into camp at Captain Samuel
Stalnaker's old place on the Middle Fork
of Holston. Because of his deliberately dilatory
policy, Byrd was superseded in the command
by Colonel Adam Stephen. Marching
their forces to the Long Island of Holston, Stephen
and Waddell erected there Fort Robinson,
in compliance with the instructions of
Governor Fauquier, of Virginia. The Cherokees,
heartily tired of the war, now sued for
peace, which was concluded, independent of
the treaty at Charleston, on November 19,
1761.

The successful termination of this campaign
had an effect of signal importance in the development

of the expansionist spirit. The rich
and beautiful lands which fell under the eye
of the North Carolina and Virginia pioneers
under Waddell, Byrd, and Stephen, lured
them irresistibly on to wider casts for fortune
and bolder explorations into the unknown,
beckoning West.