Cherokee War continues--Marion leads the Forlorn Hope at
the Battle of Etchoee.
The Cherokees were very far from being subdued or satisfied. The snake
had been "scotched not killed", and stung, rather than humbled by the
chastisement they received, they prepared to assume the offensive with
sudden vigor. Concentrating a numerous force upon the distant garrison
of Fort Loudon, on the Tennessee river, they succeeded in reducing it by
famine. Here they took bloody revenge for the massacre of their chiefs
at Prince George. The garrison was butchered, after a formal surrender
upon terms which guaranteed them protection. This wholesale and
vindictive barbarity, while it betrayed the spirit which filled the
savages, had the still farther effect of encouraging them in a warfare
which had so far gratified very equally their appetites for blood and
booty. In addition to this natural effect, the result of their own wild
passions, there were other influences, from without, at work among them.
Certain French emissaries had crept into their towns and were busily
engaged, with bribes and arguments, in stimulating them to continued
warfare. This, in all probability, was the secret influence, which, over
all, kept them from listening, as well to their own fears, as to the
urgent suggestions of the British authorities, for peace. Hitherto, the
Cherokees had given no ear to the temptations of the French, whom they
considered a frivolous people, and whose professions of faith they were
very likely to have regarded with distrust. But the labors of their
emissaries at this juncture, harmonizing with the temper of the nation,
were necessarily more than usually successful. One of these emissaries,
Louis Latinac, an officer of considerable talent, proved an able
instigator to mischief. He persuaded them, against the better reason of
their older chiefs, to the rejection of every overture for peace. Their
successes at Fort Loudon were, perhaps, sufficient arguments for the
continuance of war, but there were others not less potent. The king of
France was now to be their ally in place of him of Great Britain. The
one "great father" was no less able than the other to minister to their
appetites and necessities. His arms and ammunition replaced those which
had been withdrawn by the latter; and we may suppose that the liberality
of the new allies was such as to admit of very favorable comparison
and contrast with that which they had experienced at the hands of
the British. Their very excesses in the war were favorable to its
continuance; as they might very well doubt the binding force of treaties
between parties, the bad faith of whom had been written so terribly
in blood. At a great meeting of the nation, at which Louis Latinac was
present, he, with something of their own manner, seizing suddenly upon a
hatchet, struck it violently into a block of wood, exclaiming, as he did
so, "Who is the warrior that will take this up for the king of France?"
Salouee, a young chief of Estatoee, instantly tore the weapon from the
tree. He declared himself for instant and continued war. "The spirits
of our slain brothers," was his cry, "call upon us to avenge their
massacre. He is a woman that dares not follow me!"
Such being the spirit of the savages, the Carolinians had no alternative
but to resume their arms. Col. Montgomery having gone to England, the
command devolved upon Colonel Grant, and the Highlanders were once more
ordered to the relief of the province. The Carolinians were now somewhat
better prepared to cooperate with their allies. A native regiment of
twelve hundred men was raised, and the command given to Col. Middleton,
a brave and accomplished provincial officer.
To this regiment Marion was attached, under the immediate command
of Moultrie. Many of his associates in this Cherokee war became
subsequently, like himself, distinguished in the war with Great Britain.
Among these may be mentioned the names of Moultrie,* Henry Laurens,
Andrew Pickens and Isaac Huger. These were all officers, even in that
early day, and Marion himself held a lieutenancy--some proof that,
however little we may know of the circumstances by which he secured the
confidence of his neighbors, he was already in full possession of it.
How much of the future acts and successes of these brave men was due
to the exercises and events of this Cherokee war, may reasonably
be conjectured by every reader who knows the value of a stern
apprenticeship to a hazardous profession. Its successive campaigns
against no inferior enemy, and under circumstances of peril and
privation of no common order, were such as must have afforded them
frequent opportunity of making themselves familiar equally with the
exigencies and responsibilities of command.
* Moultrie in his Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 223, would seem to
settle the question in the negative, whether Marion was or
was not in the preceding campaign. He says, "General Marion
and myself ENTERED THE FIELD OF MARS TOGETHER, in an
expedition against the Cherokee Indians, under the command
of Colonel James Grant, in 1761, when I had the honor to
command a light infantry company in a provincial regiment;
he was my first lieutenant. He was an active, brave and
hardy soldier, and an excellent partisan officer." This is
very far however from being conclusive, inasmuch as we have
seen that Marion 'entered the field of Mars' two years
before, under the command of his brother, in the first
campaign of Lyttleton against the Indians. This latter fact
is settled beyond all question.--
To the united forces of Colonels Grant and Middleton, were added a
certain number of Chickasaw and Catawba Indians; making a total of
twenty-six hundred men. This army reached Fort Prince George on the 29th
of May, 1761. On the 7th of June following, it took up the line of march
for the enemy's country. The advance was conducted with caution, but
without molestation, until it reached the place where Montgomery, in
the previous campaign, had encountered the Indians, near the town of
Etchoee. Here the Cherokees were again prepared to make a stand, and to
dispute a pass which, above all others, seemed to be admirably designed
by nature for the purposes of defence. Their position was not exactly
what it had been on the previous occasion, but its characteristic
advantages were the same. Hitherto, the Indians had shown considerable
judgment in the selection of their battle-grounds, and in the general
employment of their strength. This judgment they probably owed in
great part to their present adversaries. Quick in their instinct,
and surprisingly observant, they had soon learned the use of European
weapons. The various lessons of European tactics, the modes of attack
and defence, were, in their united struggles with the French, equally
open to their study and acquisition. They had not suffered these lessons
to escape them. But they probably owed something of their skill in the
present war to the active counsels of the French emissaries. The fact
is not recorded by the historian, but there is no reason to suppose that
the officers who counselled the war, would withhold themselves when the
opportunity offered, from giving directions in the field. The French
had frequently distinguished themselves, by leading on forces entirely
composed of Indians. The practice was common. Even at the defeat of
Braddock, the French troops bore but a small proportion to their Indian
allies. There is no reason to suppose that Louis Latinac was not present
at one or both of the bloody fields of Etchoee.
The provincial army marched in good order upon the suspected position.
The Indian auxiliaries, who were in the van, first discovered signs of
an enemy. The Cherokees were in possession of a hill, strongly posted,
and in considerable force, upon the right flank of the army. Finding
themselves discovered, they opened their fire upon the advanced guard,
and followed it up with a gallant charge. But the van being vigorously
and promptly supported, they were driven back, and resumed their
position upon the hill. Under this hill the line of march lay for a
considerable distance. To attempt, therefore, to continue the march
before dislodging the enemy in possession of it, would be to expose
the troops to a protracted fire, the more murderous, as it would be
delivered by a foe in a position of perfect security. The advanced guard
was ordered upon this duty, and from this body a forlorn-hope of thirty
men was chosen, to force the perilous entrance to the foe. The command
of this devoted corps was assigned to Francis Marion, still a lieutenant
under the command of Moultrie, in the provincial regiment of Middleton.
The ascent of the hill was by means of a gloomy defile, through which
the little band, headed gallantly by their leader, advanced with due
rapidity; a considerable body of the army moving forward at the same
time in support of the advance. Scarcely had the detachment penetrated
the defile, when the war-whoop gave the signal. The savages, still
concealed, poured in a deadly fire, by which no less than twenty-one of
this fated band were prostrated.* Fortunately their leader was not
among them. He seems, like Washington, to have been the special care
of Providence. The residue were only saved from destruction by the
proximity of the advance, whose hurried approach, while giving them
safety, brought on the main action. The battle was fought with great
carnage on both sides. The Cherokees were not only well posted, but
they were in great numbers. Repeatedly dislodged by the bayonet, they as
repeatedly returned to the attack; and, driven from one quarter, rallied
upon another, with a tenacious and unshaken valor becoming in men who
were defending the passes to the bosom of their country. From eight
in the morning until noon, the fight was continued, not only without
intermission, but seemingly without any decisive results on either side.
But, at length, the patient resolution of the whites prevailed; and,
about two o'clock in the day, the field was yielded by the reluctant
Cherokees to their superior foes. This victory determined the fate of
Etchoee, a town of considerable size, which was reduced to ashes.
* Weems, p. 21. Horry's MS. Memoir, p. 58.--
The result of this fierce engagement seems to have broken the spirit of
the nation. They had chosen the position of greatest strength to make
their stand, and brought to the struggle their best spirits and bravest
warriors. In the issue, they had shown, by their dogged and determined
valor, the great importance which it carried in their eyes. The day
once decided against them, they appeared to be equally without heart and
hope; they no longer appeared in arms--no longer offered defence--and
the army of the Carolinians marched through the heart of the nation,
searching its secret settlements, and everywhere inflicting the severest
penalties of war. The rest of the campaign was an easy progress, and
terrible was the retribution which it brought with it. No less than
fourteen of their towns, in the middle settlements, shared the fate of
Etchoee. Their granaries were yielded to the flames, their cornfields
ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the unsparing sword,
took refuge, with their almost starving families, among the barren
mountains, which could yield them little but security. A chastisement so
extreme was supposed to be necessary, in order to subdue for ever that
lively disposition for war, upon the smallest provocation, which, of
late years, the Cherokees had manifested but too frequently; but it may
be doubted whether the means which were employed for administering this
admonitory lesson, were of the most legitimate character. We must always
continue to doubt that humanity required the destruction of towns and
hamlets, whose miserable walls of clay and roofs of thatch could give
shelter to none but babes and sucklings--women with their young--those
who had never offended, and those who could not well offend--the
innocent victims to an authority which they never dared oppose. The
reckless destruction of their granaries--fields yet growing with
grain--necessarily exposed to the worst privations of famine only those
portions of the savage population who were least guilty. The warrior
and hunter could readily relieve himself from the gnawing necessities of
hunger. He could wander off to remote tribes, and, armed with rifle or
bow, could easily secure his game, sufficient for his own wants, from
the contiguous forest. But these were resources inaccessible to the
weak, the old, the timid, and the imbecile. Surely, it was a cruel
measure of war, and if necessary to the safety of the whites, renders
still more criminal the wanton excesses of the latter, by which it was
originally provoked. It is pleasing to be able to show that Marion felt,
in this matter, as became that rare humanity which was one of the most
remarkable and lovely traits in his character,--the more remarkable,
indeed, as shining out among endowments which, in particular, designated
him for a military life--a life which is supposed to need for its
stimulus so much that is sanguinary, if not brutal, in one's nature.
It is recorded of him, that the severities practised in this campaign
filled him, long after, with recollections of sorrow. Writing to a
friend,* he gives a brief description of the calamities of the war, in
terms equally touching and picturesque. "We arrived," he writes, "at
the Indian towns in the month of July. As the lands were rich, and the
season had been favorable, the corn was bending under the double weight
of lusty roasting ears and pods of clustering beans. The furrows seemed
to rejoice under their precious loads--the fields stood thick with
bread. We encamped the first night in the woods, near the fields, where
the whole army feasted on the young corn, which, with fat venison, made
a most delicious treat.
* In a letter quoted by Weems. [The poetic language here
suggests the possibility that this letter may be one of
Weems' inventions.--A. L., 1996.]--
"The next morning we proceeded, by order of Colonel Grant, to burn down
the Indian cabins. Some of our men seemed to enjoy this cruel
work, laughing very heartily at the curling flames as they mounted,
loud-crackling, over the tops of the huts. But to me it appeared a
shocking sight. "Poor creatures!" thought I, "we surely need not grudge
you such miserable habitations." But when we came, ACCORDING TO ORDERS,
to cut down the fields of corn, I could scarcely refrain from tears. For
who could see the stalks that stood so stately, with broad green leaves
and gaily-tasselled shocks, filled with sweet milky fluid, and flour,
the staff of life--who, I say, without grief, could see these sacred
plants sinking under our swords, with all their precious load, to wither
and rot untasted, in their mourning fields!
"I saw everywhere around the footsteps of the little Indian children,
where they had lately played under the shelter of the rustling corn.
No doubt they had often looked up with joy to the swelling shocks,
and gladdened when they thought of their abundant cakes for the coming
winter. When we are gone, thought I, they will return, and peeping
through the weeds with tearful eyes, will mark the ghastly ruin poured
over their homes, and the happy fields where they had so often played.
'Who did this?' they will ask their mothers. 'The white people, the
Christians did it!' will be the reply."
"It would be no easy matter," says Hewatt, the earliest regular
historian of Carolina, "to describe the hardships which this little army
endured, in the wilderness, from heat, thirst, watching, danger, and
fatigue. Thirty days did Colonel Grant continue in the heart of the
Cherokee territories, and upon his return to Fort Prince George, the
feet and legs of many of his army were so mangled, and their strength
and spirits so much exhausted, that they were unable to march farther."
But the chastisement which the Indians had received, secured the object
for the attainment of which it was inflicted. The Cherokees sued for
peace, and Marion once more retired to the obscurity of rural life; we
may well believe with a human sense of satisfaction, that the painful
duty upon which he had been engaged was at length over. Unhappily, the
details of the war, beyond those which we have given, do not enable
us to ascertain the extent of his services. We are simply told that he
behaved well, with skill and spirit. More than this perhaps it would
be unreasonable to expect from any degree of talent, in the subordinate
situation which he at that time occupied.