IN THE CURRENT OF THE REVOLUTION--THE SOUTHERN BACKWOODSMEN OVERWHELM
THE CHEROKEES, 1776.
The great western drift of our people began almost at the moment when
they became Americans, and ceased to be merely British colonists. They
crossed the great divide which sundered the springs of the seaboard
rivers from the sources of the western waters about the time that
American citizens first publicly acted as American freemen, knit
together by common ties, and with interests no longer akin to those of
the mother country. The movement which was to make the future nation a
continental power was begun immediately after the hitherto separate
colonies had taken the first step towards solidification. While the
communities of the sea-coast were yet in a fever heat from the uprising
against the stamp tax, the first explorers were toiling painfully to
Kentucky, and the first settlers were building their palisaded hamlets
on the banks of the Watauga. The year that saw the first Continental
Congress saw also the short, grim tragedy of Lord Dunmore's war. The
early battles of the Revolution were fought while Boon's comrades were
laying the foundations of their commonwealth.
Hitherto the two chains of events had been only remotely connected; but
in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, the struggle
between the king and his rebellious subjects shook the whole land, and
the men of the western border were drawn headlong into the full current
of revolutionary warfare. From that moment our politics became national,
and the fate of each portion of our country was thenceforth in some sort
dependent upon the welfare of every other. Each section had its own work
to do; the east won independence while the west began to conquer the
continent. Yet the deeds of each were of vital consequence to the other.
Washington's Continentals gave the west its freedom; and took in return
for themselves and their children a share of the land that had been
conquered and held by the scanty bands of tall backwoodsmen.
The backwoodsmen, the men of the up-country, were, as a whole, ardent
adherents of the patriot or American side. Yet there were among them
many loyalists or tories; and these tories included in their ranks much
the greatest portion of the vicious and the disorderly elements. This
was the direct reverse of what obtained along portions of the seaboard,
where large numbers of the peaceable, well-to-do people stood loyally by
the king. In the up-country, however, the Presbyterian Irish, with their
fellows of Calvinistic stock and faith, formed the back-bone of the
moral and order-loving element; and the Presbyterian Irish[1] were
almost to a man staunch and furious upholders of the Continental
Congress. Naturally, the large bands of murderers, horse-thieves, and
other wild outlaws, whom these grim friends of order hunted down with
merciless severity, were glad to throw in their lot with any party that
promised revenge upon their foes. But of course there were lawless
characters on both sides; in certain localities where the crop of
jealousies, always a rank backwoods growth, had been unusually large,
and had therefore produced long-standing and bitter feuds,[2] the rival
families espoused opposite sides from sheer vindictive hatred of one
another. As a result, the struggle in the backwoods between tories and
whigs, king's-men and congress-men,[3] did not merely turn upon the
questions everywhere at stake between the American and British parties.
It was also in part a fight between the law-abiding and the lawless, and
in part a slaking of savage personal animosities, wherein the borderers
glutted their vengeance on one another. They exercised without restraint
the right of private warfare, long abandoned in more civilized regions.
It was natural that such a contest should be waged with appalling
ferocity.
Nevertheless this very ferocity was not only inevitable, but it was in a
certain sense proper; or, at least, even if many of its manifestations
were blamable, the spirit that lay behind them was right. The
backwoodsmen were no sentimentalists; they were grim, hard,
matter-of-fact men, engaged all their lives long in an unending struggle
with hostile forces, both human and natural; men who in this struggle
had acquired many unamiable qualities, but who had learned likewise to
appreciate at their full value the inestimable virtues of courage and
common-sense. The crisis demanded that they should be both strong and
good; but, above all things, it demanded that they should be strong.
Weakness would have ruined them. It was needful that justice should
stand before mercy; and they could no longer have held their homes, had
they not put down their foes, of every kind, with an iron hand. They did
not have many theories; but they were too genuinely liberty-loving not
to keenly feel that their freedom was jeopardized as much by domestic
disorder as by foreign aggression.
The tories were obnoxious under two heads: they were the allies of a
tyrant who lived beyond the sea, and they were the friends of anarchy at
home. They were felt by the frontiersmen to be criminals rather than
ordinary foes. They included in their ranks the mass of men who had been
guilty of the two worst frontier crimes--horse-stealing and murder; and
their own feats were in the eyes of their neighbors in no way
distinguishable from those of other horse-thieves and murderers.
Accordingly the backwoodsmen soon grew to regard toryism as merely
another crime; and the courts sometimes executed equally summary justice
on tory, desperado, and stock-thief, holding each as having forfeited
his life.[4]
The backwoodsmen were engaged in a threefold contest. In the first
place, they were occasionally, but not often, opposed to the hired
British and German soldiers of a foreign king. Next, they were engaged
in a fierce civil war with the tories of their own number. Finally, they
were pitted against the Indians, in the ceaseless border struggle of a
rude, vigorous civilization to overcome an inevitably hostile savagery.
The regular British armies, marching to and fro in the course of their
long campaigns on the seaboard, rarely went far enough back to threaten
the frontiersmen; the latter had to do chiefly with tories led by
British chiefs, and with Indians instigated by British agents.
Soon after the conflict with the revolted colonists became one of arms
as well as one of opinions the British began to rouse the Indian tribes
to take their part. In the northwest they were at first unsuccessful;
the memory of Lord Dunmore's war was still fresh in the minds of the
tribes beyond the Ohio, and they remained for the most part neutral. The
Shawnees continued even in 1776 to send in to the Americans white
prisoners collected from among their outlying bands, in accordance with
the terms of the treaty entered into on the Pickaway plains.[5]
But the southwestern Indians were not held in check by memories of
recent defeat, and they were alarmed by the encroachments of the whites.
Although the Cherokees had regularly ceded to the Watauga settlers their
land, they still continued jealous of them; and both Creeks and
Cherokees were much irritated at the conduct of some of the lawless
Georgian frontiersmen.[6] The colonial authorities tried to put a stop
to this lawlessness, and one of the chief offenders was actually seized
and hung in the presence of two Indians.[7] This had a momentary effect
on the Creeks, and induced them for the time being to observe a kind of
nominal neutrality, though they still furnished bodies of warriors to
help the British and Cherokees.[8]
The latter, however, who were the nearest neighbors of the Americans,
promptly took up the tomahawk at the bidding of the British. The royal
agents among these southern Indians had so far successfully[9] followed
the perfectly cold-blooded though perhaps necessary policy of exciting
the tribes to war with one another, in order that they might leave the
whites at peace; but now, as they officially reported to the British
commander, General Gage, they deemed this course no longer wise, and,
instead of fomenting, they endeavored to allay, the strife between the
Chickasaws and Creeks, so as to allow the latter to turn their full
strength against the Georgians.[10] At the same time every effort was
made to induce the Cherokees to rise,[11] and they were promised
gunpowder, blankets, and the like although some of the promised stores
were seized by the Americans while being forwarded to the Indians.[12]
In short, the British were active and successful in rousing the war
spirit among Creeks, Cherokees, Chocktaws, and Chickasaws, having
numerous agents in all these tribes.[13] Their success, and the
consequent ravages of the Indians, maddened the American frontiersmen
upon whom the blow fell, and changed their resentment against the
British king into a deadly and lasting hatred, which their sons and
grandsons inherited. Indian warfare was of such peculiar atrocity that
the employment of Indians as allies forbade any further hope of
reconciliation. It is not necessary to accept the American estimate of
the motives inspiring the act in order to sympathize fully with the
horror and anger that it aroused among the frontiersmen. They saw their
homes destroyed, their wives outraged, their children captured, their
friends butchered and tortured wholesale by Indians armed with British
weapons, bribed by British gold, and obeying the orders of British
agents and commanders. Their stormy anger was not likely to be allayed
by the consideration that Congress also had at first made some effort to
enlist Indians in the patriot forces, nor were they apt to bear in mind
the fact that the British, instead of being abnormally cruel, were in
reality less so than our former French and Spanish opponents.[14]
Looking back it is easy to see that the Indians were the natural foes of
the American people, and therefore the natural allies of the British
Government. They had constantly to fear the advance of the Americans,
while from the fur traders, Indian agents, and army officers who alone
represented Britain, they had nothing but coveted treasures of every
kind to expect. They seemed tools forged for the hands of the royal
commanders, whose own people lay far beyond the reach of reprisals in
kind; and it was perhaps too much to expect that in that age such tools
should not be used.[15] We had less temptation to employ them, less
means wherewith to pay them, and more cause to be hostile to and dread
them; and moreover our skirts are not quite clear in the matter, after
all, for we more than once showed a tendency to bid for their support.
But, after all is said, the fact remains that we have to deal, not with
what, under other circumstances, the Americans _might_ have done,
but with what the British actually _did;_ and for this there can be
many apologies, but no sufficient excuse. When the commissioners to the
southern Indians wrote to Lord George Germain, "we have been
indefatigable in our endeavors to keep up a constant succession of
parties of Indians to annoy the rebels," the writers must have well
known, what the king's ministers should also have made it their business
to know, that the war-parties whom they thus boasted of continually
sending against the settlements directed their efforts mainly, indeed
almost exclusively, not against bodies of armed men, but against the
husbandmen as they unsuspectingly tilled the fields, and against the
women and children who cowered helplessly in the log-cabins.[16] All men
knew that the prisoners who fell into Indian hands, of whatever age or
sex, often suffered a fate hideous and revolting beyond belief and
beyond description. Such a letter as that quoted above makes the
advisers of King George the Third directly responsible for the manifold
and frightful crimes of their red allies.
It is small wonder that such a contest should have roused in the breasts
of the frontiersmen not only ruthless and undying abhorrence of the
Indians, but also a bitterly vindictive feeling of hostility towards
Great Britain; a feeling that was all-powerful for a generation
afterwards, and traces of which linger even to the present day.
Moreover, the Indian forays, in some ways, damaged the loyalist cause.
The savages had received strict instructions not to molest any of the
king's friends;[17] but they were far too intent on plunder and rapine
to discriminate between whig and tory. Accordingly their ravages drove
the best tories, who had at first hailed the Indian advance with joy,
into the patriot ranks, making the frontier almost solidly whig; save
for the refugees, who were willing to cast in their lot with the
savages.[18]
While the Creeks were halting and considering, and while the Choctaws
and Chickasaws were being visited by British emissaries, the Cherokees
flung themselves on the frontier folk. They had been short of
ammunition; but when the British agents sent them fifty horse-loads by a
pack-train that was driven through the Creek towns, they no longer
hesitated.[19] The agents showed very poor generalship in making them
rise so early, when there were no British troops in the southern States,
and when the Americans were consequently unhampered and free to deal
with the Indians.[20] Had the rising been put off until a British army
was in Georgia, it might well have proved successful.
The Cherokee villages stood in that cluster of high mountain chains
which mark the ending of the present boundaries of Georgia and both
Carolinas. These provinces lay east and southeast of them. Directly
north were the forted villages of the Watauga pioneers, in the valley of
the upper Tennessee, and beyond these again, in the same valley, the
Virginian outpost settlements. Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia were alike threatened by the outbreak, while the Watauga people
were certain to be the chief sufferers. The Cherokees were so near the
settlements that their incursions were doubly dangerous. On the other
hand, there was not nearly as much difficulty in dealing them a
counter-blow as in the case of the northern Indians, for their towns lay
thickly together and were comparatively easy of access. Moreover, they
were not rated such formidable fighters. By comparing Lord Dunmore's war
in 1774 with this struggle against the Cherokees in 1776, it is easy to
see the difference between a contest against the northern and one
against the southern tribes. In 1776 our Indian foes were more numerous
than in 1774, for there were over two thousand Cherokee
warriors--perhaps two thousand five hundred,--assisted by a few Creeks
and tories; they were closer to the frontier, and so their ravages were
more serious; but they did not prove such redoubtable foes as
Cornstalk's warriors, their villages were easier reached, and a more
telling punishment was inflicted.
The Cherokees had been showing signs of hostility for some time. They
had murdered two Virginians the previous year;[21] and word was brought
to the settlements, early in the summer of '76, that they were
undoubtedly preparing for war, as they were mending guns, making
moccasins and beating flour for the march.[22] In June their ravages
began.[23] The Otari, or Overhill Cherokees, had sent runners to the
valley towns, asking their people to wait until all were ready before
marching, that the settlements might be struck simultaneously; but some
of the young braves among the lower towns could not be restrained, and
in consequence the outlying settlers of Georgia and the Carolinas were
the first to be assailed.
The main attack was made early in July, the warriors rushing down from
their upland fastnesses in fierce and headlong haste, the different
bands marching north, east, and southeast at the same moment. From the
Holston to the Tugelou, from southwestern Virginia to northwestern
Georgia, the back-county settlements were instantly wrapped in the
sudden horror of savage warfare.
The Watauga people, the most exposed of all, received timely warning
from a friendly squaw,[24] to whom the whites ever after showed respect
and gratitude. They at once began to prepare for the stroke; and in all
the western world of woodsmen there were no men better fitted for such a
death grapple. They still formed a typical pioneer community; and their
number had been swelled from time to time by the arrival of other bold
and restless spirits. Their westernmost settlement this year was in
Carter's valley; where four men had cleared a few acres of corn-land,
and had hunted buffalo for their winter's meat.[25]
As soon as they learned definitely that the Otari warriors, some seven
hundred in number, were marching against them, they took refuge in their
wooden forts or stations. Among the most important of these were the one
at Watauga, in which Sevier and Robertson held command, and another
known as Baton's Station, placed just above the forks of the
Holston.[26] Some six miles from the latter, near the Long Island or Big
Island of the Holston, lay quite a large tract of level land, covered
with an open growth of saplings, and known as the Island flats.
The Indians were divided into several bands; some of their number
crossed over into Carter's valley, and after ravaging it, passed on up
the Clinch. The settlers at once gathered in the little stockades; those
who delayed were surprised by the savages, and were slain as they fled,
or else were captured, perhaps to die by torture,--men, women, and
children alike. The cabins were burnt, the grain destroyed, the cattle
and horses driven off, and the sheep and hogs shot down with arrows; the
Indians carried bows and arrows for this express purpose, so as to avoid
wasting powder and lead. The bolder war-parties, in their search for
scalps and plunder, penetrated into Virginia a hundred miles beyond the
frontier,[27] wasting the country with tomahawk and brand up to the
Seven-Mile Ford. The roads leading to the wooden forts were crowded
with settlers, who, in their mortal need of hurry, had barely time to
snatch up a few of the household goods, and, if especially lucky, to
mount the women and children on horses; as usual in such a flight, there
occurred many deeds of cowardly selfishness, offset by many feats of
courage and self-sacrifice. Once in the fort, the backwoodsmen often
banded into parties, and sallied out to fall on the Indians. Sometimes
these parties were worsted; at other times they overcame their foes
either by ambush or in fair fight. One such party from the Wolf Hills
fort killed eleven Indian warriors; and on their return they hung the
scalps of their slain foes, as trophies of triumph, from a pole over the
fort gate.[28] They were Bible-readers in this fort, and they had their
Presbyterian minister with them, having organized a special party to
bring in the books he had left in his cabin; they joined in prayer and
thanksgiving for their successes; but this did not hinder them from
scalping the men they killed. They were too well-read in the merciless
wars of the Chosen People to feel the need of sparing the fallen; indeed
they would have been most foolish had they done so; for they were
battling with a heathen enemy more ruthless and terrible than ever was
Canaanite or Philistine. The two largest of the invading Indian
bands[29] moved, one by way of the mountains, to fall on the Watauga
fort and its neighbors, and the other, led by the great war chief,
Dragging Canoe, to lay waste the country guarded by Eaton's Station.
The white scouts--trained woodsmen, whose lives had been spent in the
chase and in forest warfare--kept the commanders or headmen of the forts
well informed of the Indian advance. As soon as it was known what part
was really threatened, runners were sent to the settlements near by,
calling on the riflemen to gather at Eaton's Station; whither they
accordingly came in small bodies, under their respective militia
captains.[30]
No man was really in command; the senior captain exercised a vague kind
of right of advice over the others, and the latter in turn got from
their men such obedience as their own personal influence was able to
procure. But the levy, if disorderly, was composed of excellent marksmen
and woodsmen, sinewy, hardy, full of fight, and accustomed to act
together. A council was held, and it was decided not to stay cooped up
in the fort, like turkeys in a pen, while the Indians ravaged the fields
and burnt the homesteads, but to march out at once and break the shock
by a counter-stroke.
Accordingly, on the morning of the twentieth of July, they filed out of
the fort, one hundred and seventy strong, and bent their steps towards
the Island Flats. Well versed in woodland warfare, the frontier riflemen
marched as well as fought on a system of their own, much more effective
for this purpose than the discipline of European regulars. The men of
this little levy walked strung out in Indian file, in two parallel
lines,[31] with scouts in front, and flankers on each side. Marching
thus they could not be surprised, and were ready at any moment to do
battle with the Indians, in open order and taking shelter behind the
trees; while regulars, crowded together, were helpless before the
savages whom the forest screened from view, and who esteemed it an easy
task to overcome any number of foes if gathered in a huddle.[32]
When near the Flats the whites, walking silently with moccasined feet,
came suddenly on a party of twenty Indians, who, on being attacked, fled
in the utmost haste, leaving behind ten of their bundles--for the
southern warriors carried with them, when on the war-path, small bundles
containing their few necessaries.
After this trifling success a council was held, and, as the day was
drawing to a close, it was decided to return to the fort. Some of the
men were dissatisfied with the decision, and there followed an incident
as characteristic in its way as was the bravery with which the battle
was subsequently fought. The discontented soldiers expressed their
feelings freely, commenting especially upon the supposed lack of courage
on the part of one of the captains. The latter, after brooding over the
matter until the men had begun to march off the ground towards home,
suddenly halted the line in which he was walking, and proceeded to
harangue the troops in defence of his own reputation. Apparently no one
interfered to prevent this remarkable piece of military
self-justification; the soldiers were evidently accustomed openly to
criticise the conduct of their commanders, while the latter responded in
any manner they saw fit. As soon as the address was over, and the lines
once more straightened out, the march was renewed in the original order;
and immediately afterwards the scouts brought news that a considerable
body of Indians, misled by their retreat, was running rapidly up to
assail their rear.[33]
The right file was promptly wheeled to the right and the left to the
left, forming a line of battle a quarter of a mile long, the men taking
advantage of the cover when possible. There was at first some confusion
and a momentary panic, which was instantly quelled, the officers and
many of the men joining to encourage and rally the few whom the
suddenness of the attack rendered faint-hearted. The Otari warriors,
instead of showing the usual Indian caution, came running on at headlong
speed, believing that the whites were fleeing in terror; while still
some three hundred yards off[34] they raised the war-whoop and charged
without halting, the foremost chiefs hallooing out that the white men
were running, and to come on and scalp them. They were led by Dragging
Canoe himself, and were formed very curiously, their centre being
cone-shaped, while their wings were curved outward; apparently they
believed the white line to be wavering and hoped to break through its
middle at the same time that they outflanked it, trusting to a single
furious onset instead of to their usual tactics.[35] The result showed
their folly. The frontiersmen on the right and left scattered out still
farther, so that their line could not be outflanked; and waiting coolly
till the Otari were close up, the whites fired into them. The long
rifles cracked like four-horse whips; they were held in skilful hands,
many of the assailants fell, and the rush was checked at once. A short
fight at close quarters ensued here and there along the line, Dragging
Canoe was struck down and severely wounded, and then the Indians fled in
the utmost confusion, every man for himself. Yet they carried off their
wounded and perhaps some of their dead. The whites took thirteen scalps,
and of their own number but four were seriously hurt; they also took
many guns and much plunder.
In this battle of the Island Flats[36] the whites were slightly
superior[37] in number to their foes; and they won without difficulty,
inflicting a far heavier loss than they received. In this respect it
differs markedly from most other Indian fights of the same time; and
many of its particulars render it noteworthy. Moreover, it had a very
good effect, cheering the frontiersmen greatly, and enabling them to
make head against the discouraged Indians.
On the same day the Watauga fort[38] was attacked by a large force at
sunrise. It was crowded with women and children,[39] but contained only
forty or fifty men. The latter, however, were not only resolute and
well-armed, but were also on the alert to guard against surprise; the
Indians were discovered as they advanced in the gray light, and were at
once beaten back with loss from the loopholed stockade. Robertson
commanded in the fort, Sevier acting as his lieutenant. Of course, the
only hope of assistance was from Virginia, North Carolina being
separated from the Watauga people by great mountain chains; and Sevier
had already notified the officers of Fincastle that the Indians were
advancing. His letter was of laconic brevity, and contained no demand
for help; it was merely a warning that the Indians were undoubtedly
about to start, and that "they intended to drive the country up to New
River before they returned"--so that it behooved the Fincastle men to
look to their own hearthsides. Sevier was a very fearless, self-reliant
man, and doubtless felt confident that the settlers themselves could
beat back their assailants. His forecast proved correct; for the
Indians, after maintaining an irregular siege of the fort for some three
weeks, retired, almost at the moment that parties of frontiersmen came
to the rescue from some of the neighboring forts.[40]
While the foe was still lurking about the fort the people within were
forced to subsist solely on parched corn; and from time to time some of
them became so irritated by the irksome monotony of their confinement,
that they ventured out heedless of the danger. Three or four of them
were killed by the Indians, and one boy was carried off to one of their
towns, where he was burnt at the stake; while a woman who was also
captured at this time was only saved from a like fate by the exertions
of the same Cherokee squaw already mentioned as warning the settlers.
Tradition relates that Sevier, now a young widower, fell in love with
the woman he soon afterwards married during the siege. Her name was Kate
Sherrill. She was a tall girl, brown-haired, comely, lithe and supple
"as a hickory sapling." One day while without the fort she was almost
surprised by some Indians. Running like a deer, she reached the
stockade, sprang up so as to catch the top with her hands, and drawing
herself over, was caught in Sevier's arms on the other side; through a
loop-hole he had already shot the headmost of her pursuers.
Soon after the baffled Otari retreated from Robertson's fort the other
war parties likewise left the settlements. The Watauga men together with
the immediately adjoining Virginian frontiersmen had beaten back their
foes unaided, save for some powder and lead they had received from the
older settlements; and moreover had inflicted more loss than they
suffered.[41] They had made an exceedingly vigorous and successful
fight.
The outlying settlements scattered along the western border of the
Carolinas and Georgia had been attacked somewhat earlier; the Cherokees
from the lower towns, accompanied by some Creeks and Tories, beginning
their ravages in the last days of June.[42] A small party of Georgians
had, just previously, made a sudden march into the Cherokee country.
They were trying to capture the British agent Cameron, who, being
married to an Indian wife, dwelt in her town, and owned many negroes,
horses, and cattle. The Cherokees, who had agreed not to interfere,
broke faith and surprised the party, killing some and capturing others
who were tortured to death.[43]
The frontiers were soon in a state of wild panic; for the Cherokee
inroad was marked by the usual features. Cattle were driven off, houses
burned, plantations laid waste, while the women and children were
massacred indiscriminately with the men.[44] The people fled from their
homes and crowded into the stockade forts; they were greatly hampered by
the scarcity of guns and ammunition, as much had been given to the
troops called down to the coast by the war with Britain. All the
southern colonies were maddened by the outbreak; and prepared for
immediate revenge, knowing that if they were quick they would have time
to give the Cherokees a good drubbing before the British could
interfere.[45] The plan was that they should act together, the
Virginians invading the Overhill country at the same time that the
forces from North and South Carolina and Georgia destroyed the valley
and lower towns. Thus the Cherokees would be crushed with little danger.
It proved impossible, however, to get the attacks made quite
simultaneously.
The back districts of North Carolina suffered heavily at the outset;
however, the inhabitants showed that they were able to take care of
themselves. The Cherokees came down the Catawba murdering many people;
but most of the whites took refuge in the little forts, where they
easily withstood the Indian assaults. General Griffith Rutherford raised
a frontier levy and soon relieved the besieged stations. He sent word to
the provincial authorities that if they could only get powder and lead
the men of the Salisbury district were alone quite capable of beating
off the Indians, but that if it was intended to invade the Cherokee
country he must also have help from the Hillsborough men.[46] He was
promised assistance, and was told to prepare a force to act on the
offensive with the Virginians and South Carolinians.
Before he could get ready the first counter-blow had been struck by
Georgia and South Carolina. Georgia was the weakest of all the colonies,
and the part it played in this war was but trifling. She was threatened
by British cruisers along the coast, and by the Tories of Florida; and
there was constant danger of an uprising of the black slaves, who
outnumbered the whites. The vast herds of cattle and great rice
plantations of the south offered a tempting bait to every foe. Tories
were numerous in the population, while there were incessant bickerings
with the Creeks, frequently resulting in small local wars, brought on as
often by the faithlessness and brutality of the white borderers as by
the treachery and cruelty of the red. Indeed the Indians were only kept
quiet by presents, it being an unhappy feature of the frontier troubles
that while lawless whites could not be prevented from encroaching on the
Indian lands, the Indians, in turn could only be kept at peace with the
law-abiding by being bribed.[47]
Only a small number of warriors invaded Georgia. Nevertheless they
greatly harassed the settlers, capturing several families and fighting
two or three skirmishes with varying results.[48] By the middle of July
Col. Samuel Jack[49] took the field with a force of two hundred rangers,
all young men, the old and infirm being left to guard the forts. The
Indians fled as soon as he had embodied his troops, and towards the end
of the month he marched against one or two of their small lower towns,
which he burned, destroying the grain and driving off the cattle. No
resistance was offered, and he did not lose a man.
The heaviest blow fell on South Carolina, where the Cherokees were led
by Cameron himself, accompanied by most of his tories. Some of his
warriors came from the lower towns that lay along the Tugelou and
Keowee, but most were from the middle towns, in the neighborhood of the
Tellico, and from the valley towns that lay well to the westward of
these, among the mountains, along the branches of the Hiawassee and
Chattahoochee rivers. Falling furiously on the scattered settlers, they
killed them or drove them into the wooden forts, ravaging, burning, and
murdering as elsewhere, and sparing neither age nor sex. Col. Andrew
Williamson was in command of the western districts, and he at once began
to gather together a force, taking his station at Picken's Fort, with
forty men, on July 3d.[50] It was with the utmost difficulty that he
could get troops, guns, or ammunition; but his strenuous and unceasing
efforts were successful, and his force increased day by day. It is worth
noting that these lowland troops were for the most part armed with
smoothbores, unlike the rifle-bearing mountaineers. As soon as he could
muster a couple of hundred men[51] he left the fort and advanced towards
the Indians, making continual halts,[52] so as to allow the numerous
volunteers that were flocking to his standard to reach him. At the same
time the Americans were much encouraged by the repulse of an assault
made just before daylight on one of the forts.[53] The attacking party
was some two hundred strong, half of them being white men, naked and
painted like the Indians; but after dark, on the evening before the
attack, a band of one hundred and fifty American militia, on their way
to join Williamson, entered the fort. The assault was made before dawn;
it was promptly repulsed, and at daybreak the enemy fled, having
suffered some loss; thirteen of the tories were captured, but the more
nimble Indians escaped.
By the end of July, Williamson had gathered over eleven hundred
militia[54] (including two small rifle companies), and advanced against
the Indian towns, sending his spies and scouts before him. On the last
day of the month he made a rapid night march, with three hundred and
fifty horsemen, to surprise Cameron, who lay with a party of tories and
Indians, encamped at Oconoree Creek, beyond the Cherokee town of
Eseneka, which commanded the ford of the river Keowee. The cabins and
fenced gardens of the town lay on both sides of the river. Williamson
had been told by his prisoners that the hither bank was deserted, and
advanced heedlessly, without scouts or flankers. In consequence he fell
into an ambush, for when he reached the first houses, hidden Indians
suddenly fired on him from front and flank. Many horses, including that
of the commander, were shot down, and the startled troops began a
disorderly retreat, firing at random. Col. Hammond rallied about twenty
of the coolest, and ordering them to reserve their fire, he charged the
fence from behind which the heaviest hostile fire came. When up to it,
they shot into the dark figures crouching behind it, and jumping over
charged home. The Indians immediately fled, leaving one dead and three
wounded in the hands of the whites. The action was over; but the
by-no-means-reassured victors had lost five men mortally and thirteen
severely wounded, and were still rather nervous. At daybreak Williamson
destroyed the houses near by, and started to cross the ford. But his
men, in true militia style, had become sulky and mutinous, and refused
to cross, until Col. Hammond swore he would go alone, and plunged into
the river, followed by three volunteers, whereupon the whole army
crowded after. The revulsions in their feelings was instantaneous; once
across they seemed to have left all fear as well as all prudence behind.
On the hither side there had been no getting them to advance; on the
farther there was no keeping them together, and they scattered
everywhere. Luckily the Indians were too few to retaliate; and besides
the Cherokees were not good marksmen, using so little powder in their
guns that they made very ineffective weapons. After all the houses had
been burned, and some six thousand bushels of corn, besides peas and
beans, destroyed, Williamson returned to his camp. Next day he renewed
his advance, and sent out detachments against all the other lower towns,
utterly destroying every one by the middle of August, although not
without one or two smart skirmishes.[55] His troops were very much
elated, and only the lack of provisions prevented his marching against
the middle towns. As it was, he retired to refit, leaving a garrison of
six hundred men at Eseneka, which he christened Fort Rutledge. This
ended the first stage of the retaliatory campaign, undertaken by the
whites in revenge for the outbreak. The South Carolinians, assisted
slightly by a small independent command of Georgians, who acted
separately, had destroyed the lower Cherokee towns, at the same time
that the Watauga people repulsed the attack of the Overhill warriors.
The second and most important movement was to be made by South Carolina,
North Carolina, and Virginia jointly, each sending a column of two
thousand men,[56] the two former against the middle and valley, the
latter against the Overhill towns. If the columns acted together the
Cherokees would be overwhelmed by a force three times the number of all
their warriors. The plan succeeded well, although the Virginia division
was delayed so that its action, though no less effective, was much later
than that of the others, and though the latter likewise failed to act in
perfect unison.
Rutherford and his North Carolinians were the first to take the
field.[57] He had an army of two thousand gunmen, besides pack-horsemen
and men to tend the drove of bullocks, together with a few Catawba
Indians,--a total of twenty-four hundred.[58] On September 1st he left
the head of the Catawba,[59] and the route he followed was long known by
the name of Rutherford's trace. There was not a tent in his army, and
but very few blankets; the pack-horses earned the flour, while the beef
was driven along on the hoof. Officers and men alike wore homespun
hunting-shirts trimmed with colored cotton; the cloth was made from
hemp, tow, and wild-nettle bark.
He passed over the Blue Ridge at Swananoa Gap, crossed the French Broad
at the Warriors' Ford, and then went through the mountains[60] to the
middle towns, a detachment of a thousand men making a forced march in
advance. This detachment was fired at by a small band of Indians from an
ambush, and one man was wounded in the foot; but no further resistance
was made, the towns being abandoned.[61] The main body coming up,
parties of troops were sent out in every direction, and all of the
middle towns were destroyed. Rutherford had expected to meet Williamson
at this place, but the latter did not appear, and so the North Carolina
commander determined to proceed alone against the valley towns along the
Hiawassee. Taking with him only nine hundred picked men, he attempted to
cross the rugged mountain chains which separated him from his
destination; but he had no guide, and missed the regular pass--a
fortunate thing for him, as it afterwards turned out, for he thus
escaped falling into an ambush of five hundred Cherokees who were
encamped along it.[62] After in vain trying to penetrate the tangle of
gloomy defiles and wooded peaks, he returned to the middle towns at
Canucca on September 18th. Here he met Williamson, who had just arrived,
having been delayed so that he could not leave Fort Rutledge until the
13th.[63] The South Carolinians, two thousand strong, had crossed the
Blue Ridge near the sources of the Little Tennessee.
While Rutherford rested[64] Williamson, on the 19th, pushed on through
Noewee pass, and fell into the ambush which had been laid for the
former. The pass was a narrow, open valley, walled in by steep and lofty
mountains. The Indians waited until the troops were struggling up to the
outlet, and then assailed them with a close and deadly fire. The
surprised soldiers recoiled and fell into confusion; and they were for
the second time saved from disaster by the gallantry of Colonel Hammond,
who with voice and action rallied them, endeavoring to keep them firm
while a detachment was sent to clamber up the rocks and outflank the
Indians. At the same time Lieutenant Hampton got twenty men together,
out of the rout, and ran forward, calling out: "Loaded guns advance,
empty guns fall down and load." Being joined by some thirty men more he
pushed desperately upwards. The Indians fled from the shock; and the
army thus owed its safety solely to two gallant officers. Of the whites
seventeen were killed and twenty-nine wounded;[65] they took fourteen
scalps.[66]
Although the distance was but twenty odd miles, it took Williamson five
days of incredible toil before he reached the valley towns. The troops
showed the utmost patience, clearing a path for the pack-train along the
sheer mountain sides and through the dense, untrodden forests in the
valleys. The trail often wound along cliffs where a single misstep of a
pack-animal resulted in its being dashed to pieces. But the work, though
fatiguing, was healthy; it was noticed that during the whole expedition
not a man was laid up for any length of time by sickness.
Rutherford joined Williamson immediately afterwards, and together they
utterly laid waste the valley towns; and then, in the last week of
September, started homewards. All the Cherokee settlements west of the
Appalachians had been destroyed from the face of the earth, neither
crops nor cattle being left; and most of the inhabitants were obliged to
take refuge with the Creeks.
Rutherford reached home in safety, never having experienced any real
resistance; he had lost but three men in all. He had killed twelve
Indians, and had captured nine more, besides seven whites and four
negroes. He had also taken piles of deerskins, a hundred-weight of
gunpowder and twenty-five hundred pounds of lead; and, moreover, had
wasted and destroyed to his heart's content.[67]
Williamson, too, reached home without suffering further damage, entering
Fort Rutledge on October 7th. In his two expeditions he had had
ninety-four men killed and wounded, but he had done much more harm than
any one else to the Indians. It was said the South Carolinians had taken
seventy-five scalps;[68] at any rate, the South Carolina Legislature had
offered a reward of L75 for every warrior's scalp, as well as L100 for
every Indian, and L80 for every tory or negro, taken prisoner.[69] But
the troops were forbidden to sell their prisoners as slaves--not a
needless injunction, as is shown by the fact that when it was issued
there had already been at least one case in Williamson's own army where
a captured Indian was sold into bondage.
The Virginian troops had meanwhile been slowly gathering at the Great
Island of the Holston, under Colonel William Christian, preparatory to
assaulting the Overhill Cherokees. While they were assembling the
Indians threatened them from time to time; once a small party of braves
crossed the river and killed a soldier near the main post of the army,
and also killed a settler; a day or two later another war-party slipped
by towards the settlements, but on being pursued by a detachment of
militia faced about and returned to their town.[70] On the first of
October the army started, two thousand strong,[71] including some troops
from North Carolina, and all the gunmen who could be spared from the
little stockaded hamlets scattered along the Watauga, the Holston, and
the Clinch. Except a small force of horse-riflemen the men were on foot,
each with tomahawk, scalping-knife, and long, grooved flint-lock; all
were healthy, well equipped, and in fine spirits, driving their
pack-horses and bullocks with them. Characteristically enough a
Presbyterian clergyman, following his backwoods flock, went along with
this expedition as chaplain. The army moved very cautiously, the night
encampments being made behind breastworks of felled timbers. There was
therefore no chance for a surprise; and their great inferiority in
number made it hopeless for the Cherokees to try a fair fight. In their
despair they asked help from the Creeks; but the latter replied that
they had plucked the thorn of warfare from their (the Creeks') foot, and
were welcome to keep it.[72]
The Virginians came steadily on[73] until they reached the Big Island of
the French Broad.[74] Here the Cherokees had gathered their warriors,
and they sent a tory trader across with a flag of truce. Christian well
knowing that the Virginians greatly outnumbered the Indians, let the man
go through his camp at will,[75] and sent him back with word that the
Cherokee towns were doomed, for that he would surely march to them and
destroy them. That night he left half of his men in camp, lying on their
arms by the watch-fires, while with the others he forded the river below
and came round to surprise the Indian encampment from behind; but he
found that the Indians had fled, for their hearts had become as water,
nor did they venture at any time, during this expedition, to molest the
white forces. Following them up, Christian reached the towns early in
November,[76] and remained two weeks, sending out parties to burn the
cabins and destroy the stores of corn and potatoes. The Indians[77] sent
in a flag to treat for peace, surrendering the horses and prisoners they
had taken, and agreeing to fix a boundary and give up to the settlers
the land they already had, as well as some additional territory.
Christian made peace on these terms and ceased his ravages, but he
excepted the town of Tuskega, whose people had burned alive the boy
taken captive at Watauga. This town he reduced to ashes.
Nor would the chief Dragging Canoe accept peace at all; but gathering
round him the fiercest and most unruly of the young men, he left the
rest of the tribe and retired to the Chickamauga fastnesses.
When the preliminary truce had been made Christian marched his forces
homeward, and disbanded them a fortnight before Christmas, leaving a
garrison at Holston, Great Island. During the ensuing spring and summer
peace treaties were definitely concluded between the Upper Cherokees and
Virginia and North Carolina at the Great Island of the Holston,[78] and
between the Lower Cherokees and South Carolina and Georgia at De Witt's
Corners. The Cherokees gave up some of their lands; of the four seacoast
provinces South Carolina gained most, as was proper, for she had done
and suffered most.[79]
The Watauga people and the westerners generally were the real gainers by
the war. Had the Watauga settlements been destroyed, they would no
longer have covered the Wilderness Road to Kentucky; and so Kentucky
must perforce have been abandoned. But the followers of Robertson and
Sevier stood stoutly for their homes; not one of them fled over the
mountains. The Cherokees had been so roughly handled that for several
years they did not again go to war as a body; and this not only gave the
settlers a breathing time, but also enabled them to make themselves so
strong that when the struggle was renewed they could easily hold their
own. The war was thus another and important link in the chain of events
by which the west was won; and had any link in the chain snapped during
these early years, the peace of 1783 would probably have seen the
trans-Alleghany country in the hands of a non-American power.
1. Mr. Phelan, in his "History of Tennessee," deserves especial praise
for having so clearly understood the part played by the Scotch-Irish.
2. The Campbell MSS. contain allusions to various such feuds, and
accounts of the jealousies existing not only between families, but
between prominent members of the same family.
3. See Milfort, Smyth, etc., as well as the native writers.
4. Executions for "treason," murder, and horse-stealing were very
common. For an instance where the three crimes were treated alike as
deserving the death penalty the perpetrators being hung, see Calendar of
Virginia State Papers, Vol. III., p. 361.
5. "American Archives," 4th Series, Vol. VI., p. 541. But parties of
young braves went on the war-path from time to time.
6. _Do._, Vol III., p. 790.
7. _Do._, Vol. VI., p. 1228.
8. See Milfort, pp. 46, 134, etc.
9. "American Archives," 4th Series, Vol. I., p. 1094, for example of
fight between Choctaws and Creeks.
10. _Do._, Vol. IV., p. 317. Letter of Agent John Stuart to General
Gage, St. Augustine, Oct. 3, 1775.
11. State Department MSS. No. 71, Vol. II., p. 189. Letter of David
Taitt, Deputy Superintendent (of British) in Creek Nation.
12. "American Archives," Vol. III., p. 218, August 21, 1775. _Do.,_
p. 790 September 25, 1775.
13. State Department MSS., No. 51, Vol. II., p. 17 (volume of
"Intercepted Letters"). Letters of Andrew Rainsford, John Mitchell, and
Alex McCullough, to Rt. Hon. Lord George Germain.
14. No body of British troops in the Revolution bore such a dark stain
on its laurels as the massacre at Fort William Henry left on the banners
of Montcalm; even the French, not to speak of the Spaniards and
Mexicans, were to us far more cruel foes than the British, though
generally less formidable. In fact the British, as conquerors and rulers
in America, though very disagreeable, have not usually been either
needlessly cruel nor (relatively speaking) unjust, and compare rather
favorably with most other European nations.
15. Though it must be remembered that in our own war with Mexico we
declined the proffered--and valuable--aid of the Comanches.
16. State Department MSS. "Intercepted Letters," Pensacola, July 12,
1779.
17. _Do._
18. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 610.
19. Stuart and Cameron; the latter dwelt among them, and excited them to
war. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, III., 649.
20. The only British attempt made at that time against the southern
colonies was in too small force, and failed.
21. "American Archives," 4th Series, Vol. III., p. 1112.
22. _Do.,_ 5th Series, Vol. I., p. III.
23. _Do.,_ 4th Series, Vol. VI., p. 1229.
24. Her name was Nancy Ward. Campbell MSS., Haywood, etc.
25. Ramsey, 144. The buffalo were killed (winter of 1775-1776) twelve
miles northeast of Carter's valley.
26. Haywood and his followers erroneously call it Heaton's: in the
Campbell MSS., as well as the "Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., p. 464, it
is called Eaton's or Amos Eaton's. This is contemporary authority. Other
forts were Evan Shelby's, John Shelby's, Campbell's, the Wommack Fort,
etc.
27. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 973.
28. "American Pioneers," I., 534. Letter of Benjamin Sharp, who was in
the fort at the time as a boy fourteen years old.
29. Many writers speak as if all the Indians were in these two bands,
which was not so. It is impossible to give their numbers exactly;
probably each contained from 150 to 300 warriors.
30. James Thompson, James Shelby, William Buchanan, John Campbell,
William Cocke, and Thomas Madison. See their letter of August 2, 1776,
"Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 464. Haywood, relying on tradition, says
five companies gathered; he is invaluable as an authority, but it must
be kept in mind that he often relies on traditional statement.
31. The report of the six captains says "two divisions"; from Haywood we
learn that the two divisions were two lines, evidently marching side by
side, there being a right line and a left line.
32. See James Smith, _passim._
33. Among the later Campbell MSS. are a number of copies of papers
containing traditional accounts of this battle. They are mostly very
incorrect, both as to the numbers and losses of the Indians and whites,
and as to the battle itself very little help can be derived from them.
34. Campbell MSS.
35. Campell MSS.
36. Tennessee historians sometimes call it the battle of Long Island;
which confuses it with Washington's defeat of about the same date.
37. The captains' report says the Indians were "not inferior" in
numbers; they probably put them at a maximum. Haywood and all later
writers greatly exaggerate the Indian numbers; as also their losses,
which are commonly placed at "over 40," of "26 being left dead on the
ground." In reality only 13 were so left; but in the various skirmishes
on the Watauga about this time, from the middle of July to the middle of
August, the backwoodsmen took in all 26 scalps, and one prisoner
("American Archives," 5th Series, I., 973). This is probably the origin
of the "26 dead" story; the "over 40" being merely a flourish. Ramsey
gives a story about Isaac Shelby rallying the whites to victory, and
later writers of course follow and embellish this; but Shelby's MS.
autobiography (see copy in Col. Durrett's library at Louisville) not
only makes no mention of the battle, but states that Shelby was at this
time in Kentucky; he came back in August or September, and so was
hundreds of miles from the place when the battle occurred. Ramsey gives
a number of anecdotes of ferocious personal encounters that took place
during the battle. Some of them are of very doubtful value--for instance
that of the man who killed six of the most daring Indians himself (the
total number killed being only thirteen), and the account of the Indians
all retreating when they saw another of their champions vanquished. The
climax of absurdity is reached by a recent writer, Mr. Kirke, who, after
embodying in his account all the errors of his predecessors and adding
several others on his own responsibility, winds up by stating that "two
hundred and ten men under Sevier and [Isaac] Shelby ... beat back ...
fifteen thousand Indians." These numbers can only be reached by
comparing an exaggerated estimate of all the Cherokees, men, women, and
children, with the white men encountered by a very small proportion of
the red warriors in the first two skirmishes. Moreover, as already
shown, Shelby was nowhere near the scene of conflict, and Sevier was
acting as Robertson's subaltern.
38. Another fort, called Fort Lee, had been previously held by Sevier
but had been abandoned; see Phelan, p. 42.
39. "American Archives," 5th Series, I., 973; 500 women and children.
40. Campbell MSS. Haywood says that the first help came from Evan
Shelby; Col. Russell, at Baton's Station proving dilatory. In the
Campbell MSS. are some late letters written by sons of the Captain
Campbell who took part in the Island Flats fight, denying this
statement.
41. "American Archives," 5th Series, I., 973. Of the Watauga settlers
eighteen men, two women, and several children had been killed; two or
three were taken captive. Of the Indians twenty-six were scalped;
doubtless several others were slain. Of course these figures only apply
to the Watauga neighborhood.
42. _Do.,_ p 611.
43. "History of Georgia," Hugh McCall, Savannah, 1816, p. 76.
44. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 610.
45. _Do.,_ 4th Series, VI, 1228.
46. _Do.,_ 5th Series, I., 613.
47. _Do.,_ 5th Series, I., 7, and III., 649. The Georgia
frontiersmen seem to have been peculiarly brutal in their conduct to the
Creeks; but the latter were themselves very little, if at all, better.
48. McCall; five families captured, in three skirmishes eight whites
were killed and six Indian scalps taken.
49. McCall; the Tennessee historians erroneously assign the command to
Col. McBury.
50. "View of South Carolina," John Drayton, Charleston, 1802, p. 231. A
very good book.
51. More exactly two hundred and twenty-two, on the 8th of July.
52. _E.g._, at Hogskin Creek and Barker's Creek.
53. Lyndley's Fort, on Rayborn Creek.
54. Eleven hundred and fifty-one, of whom one hundred and thirty were
riflemen. He was camped at Twenty-three Mile Creek.
55. At Tomassee, where he put to flight a body of two or three hundred
warriors, he lost eight killed and fifteen wounded, and at Tugelou, four
wounded. Besides these two towns, he also destroyed Soconee, Keowee,
Ostatay, Cherokee, Eustustie, Sugaw Town, and Brass Town.
56. All militia of course, with only the training they had received on
the rare muster days; but a warlike set, utterly unlike ordinary
militia, and for woodland work against savages in many respects much
superior to European regulars. This campaign against the Cherokees was
infinitely more successful than that waged in 1760 against the same foe
by armies of grenadiers and highlanders.
57. That is, after the return of the South Carolinians from their
destruction of the lower towns.
58. "Historical Sketches of North Carolina," John H. Wheeler, Phil.,
1851, p. 383.
59. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, Vol. II., p. 1235.
60. Up Hominy Creek, across the Pigeon, up Richland Creek, across
Tuckaseigee River, over Cowee Mount.
61. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, II., p. 1235.
62. _Do._
63. Drayton. There was a good deal of jealousy between the two armies
and their reports conflict on some points.
64. There is some conflict in the accounts of the destruction of the
valley towns; after carefully comparing the accounts in the "American
Archives," Drayton, White, Ramsey, etc., I believe that the above is
substantially accurate. However it is impossible to reconcile all of the
accounts of the relative order of Rutherford's and Williamson's marches.
65. Drayton; the "Am. Archives" say only twelve killed and twenty
wounded. In another skirmish at Cheowee three South Carolinians were
killed.
66. "Am. Archives," 5th Series, II., p. 1235.
67. _Do._
68. _Do._, p. 990; Drayton puts the total Cherokee loss at two
hundred.
69. _Do._, Vol III., p. 33.
70. These two events took place on September 26th and 29th; "Am.
Archives," 5th Series, Vol. II., p. 540. Ramsey is thus wrong in saying
no white was killed on this expedition.
71. McAfee MSS.; one of the McAfees went along and preserved a rough
diary of dates.
72. "History of Virginia," John Burke (continued by L. H. Girardin),
Petersburg, 1816, p. 176.
73. After camping a few days at Double Springs, the head-waters of Lick
Creek, to let all the Watauga men come up.
74. They sent spies in advance. The trail led through forests and marshy
canebrakes; across Nolichucky, up Long Creek and down Dunplin Creek to
the French Broad. Haywood and Ramsey.
75. McAfee MSS.
76. Nov. 5th. _Do._
77. Nov. 8th. _Do._
78. The boundary then established between the Cherokees and Watauga
people was known as Brown's Line.
79. As a very rough guess after a careful examination of all the
authorities, it may be said that in this war somewhat less than two
hundred Indians were slain, all warriors. The loss of the whites in war
was probably no greater; but it included about as many more women and
children. So that perhaps two or three times as many whites as Indians
were killed, counting in every one.