Conquest of the Old Southwest - Chapters V-VII



CHAPTER V.
IN DEFENSE OF CIVILIZATION

We give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed us by our 
Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of our neighbors, driven 
hither and yon like deer before wild beasts, came to us for shelter, yet 
the accustomed order of our congregation life was not disturbed, no, not 
even by the more than 150 Indians who at sundry times passed by, stopping 
for a day at a time and being fed by us.
--Wachovia Community Diary, 1757

With commendable energy and expedition Dinwiddie and Dobbs, acting in 
concert, initiated steps for keeping the engagements conjointly made by 
the two colonies with the Cherokees and the Catawbas in tile spring and 
summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men, "most of them Artificers, with Tools 
and Provisions," Major Andrew Lewis proceeded in the late spring to Echota 
in the Cherokee country. Here during the hot summer months they erected 
the Virginia Fort on the path from Virginia, upon the northern bank of the 
Little Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town of Echota and about 
twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville. While the fort was in process of 
construction, the Cherokees were incessantly tampered with by emissaries 
from the Nuntewees and the Savannahs in the French interest, and from the 
French themselves at the Alibamu Fort. So effective were these 
machinations, supported by extravagant promises and doubtless rich bribes, 
that the Cherokees soon were outspokenly expressing their desire for a 
French fort at Great Tellico.

Dinwiddie welcomed the departure from America of Governor Glen of South 
Carolina, who in his opinion had always acted contrary to the king's 
interest. From the new governor, William Henry Lyttelton, who arrived in 
Charleston on June 1, 1756, he hoped to secure effective cooperation in 
dealing with the Cherokees and the Catawbas. This hope was based upon 
Lyttelton's recognition, as stated in Dinwiddie's words, of the "Necessity 
of strict Union between the whole Colonies, with't any of them considering 
their particular Interest separate from the general Good of the whole." 
After constructing the fort "with't the least assistance from South 
Carolina," Major Lewis happened by accident upon a grand council being 
held in Echota in September. At that time he discovered to his great alarm 
that the machinations of the French had already produced the greatest 
imaginable change in the sentiment of the Cherokees. Captain Raymond 
Demere of the Provincials, with two hundred English troops, had arrived to 
garrison the fort; but the head men of all the Upper Towns were secretly 
influenced to agree to write a letter to Captain Demere, ordering him to 
return immediately to Charleston with all the troops under his command. At 
the grand council, Atta-kulla-kulla, the great Cherokee chieftain, 
passionately declared to the head men, who listened approvingly, that "as 
to the few soldiers of Captain Demere that was there, he would take their 
Guns, and give them to his young men to hunt with and as to their clothes 
they would soon be worn out and their skins would be tanned, and be of the 
same colour as theirs, and that they should live among them as slaves." 
With impressive dignity Major Lewis rose and earnestly pleaded for the 
observance of the terms of the treaty solemnly negotiated the preceding 
March. In response, the crafty and treacherous chieftains desired Lewis to 
tell the Governor of Virginia that "they had taken up the Hatchet against 
all Nations that were Enemies to the English"; but Lewis, an astute 
student of Indian Psychology, rightly surmised that all their glib 
professions of friendship and assistance were "only to put a gloss on 
their knavery." So it proved; for instead of the four hundred warriors 
promised under the treaty for service in Virginia, the Cherokees sent only 
seven warriors, accompanied by three women. All though the Cherokees 
petitioned Virginia for a number of men to garrison the Virginia fort, 
Dinwiddie postponed sending the fifty men provided for by the Virginia 
Assembly until he could reassure himself in regard to the "Behaviour and 
Intention" of the treacherous Indian allies. This proved to be a prudent 
decision; for not long after its erection the Virginia fort was destroyed 
by the Indians.

Whether on account of the dissatisfaction expressed by the Cherokees over 
the erection of the Virginia fort or because of a recognition of the 
mistaken policy of garrisoning a work erected by Virginia with troops sent 
from Charleston, South Carolina immediately proceeded to build another 
stronghold on the southern bank of the Tennessee at the mouth of Tellico 
River, some seven miles from the site of the Virginia fort; and here were 
posted twelve great guns, brought thither at immense labor through the 
wilderness. To this fort, named Fort Loudoun in honor of Lord Loudoun, 
then commander-in-chief of all the English forces in America, the Indians 
allured artisans by donations of land; and during the next three or four 
years a little settlement sprang up there.

The frontiers of Virginia suffered most from the incursions of hostile 
Indians during the fourteen months following May 1, 1755. In July, the 
Rev. Hugh McAden records that he preached in Virginia on a day set apart 
for fasting and prayer "on account of the wars and many murders, committed 
by the savage Indians on the back inhabitants." On July 30th a large party 
of Shawano Indians fell upon the New River settlement and wiped it out of 
existence. William Ingles was absent at the time of the raid; and Mrs. 
Ingles, who was captured, afterward effected her escape. The following 
summer (June 25, 1756), Fort Vaux on the headwaters of the Roanoke, under 
the command of Captain John Smith, was captured by about one hundred 
French and Indians, who burnt the fort, killed John Smith junior, John 
Robinson, John Tracey and John Ingles, wounded four men, and captured 
twenty-two men, women, and children. Among the captured was the famous 
Mrs. Mary Ingles, whose husband, John Ingles, was killed; but after being 
"carried away into Captivity, amongst whom she was barbarously treated," 
according to her own statement, she finally escaped and returned to 
Virginia." The frontier continued to be infested by marauding bands of 
French and Indians; and Dinwiddie gloomily confessed to Dobbs (July 22d): 
"I apprehend that we shall always be harrass'd with fly'g Parties of these 
Banditti unless we form an Expedit'n ag'st them, to attack 'em in y'r 
Towns." Such an expedition, known as the Sandy River Expedition, had been 
sent out in February to avenge the massacre of the New River settlers; but 
the enterprise engaged in by about four hundred Virginians and Cherokees 
under Major Andrew Lewis and Captain Richard Pearis, proved a disastrous 
failure. Not a single Indian was seen; and the party suffered 
extraordinary hardships and narrowly escaped starvation.

In conformity with his treaty obligations with the Catawbas, Governor 
Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect the fort promised the 
Catawbas at the spot chosen by the commissioners near the mouth of the 
South Fork of the Catawba River. This fort, for which four thousand pounds 
had been appropriated, was for the most part completed by midsummer, 1757. 
But owing, it appears, both to the machinations of the French and to the 
intermeddling of the South Carolina traders, who desired to retain the 
trade of the Catawbas for that province, Oroloswa, the Catawba King 
Heygler, sent a "talk" to Governor Lyttelton, requesting that North 
Carolina desist from the work of construction and that no fort be built 
except by South Carolina. Accordingly, Governor Dobbs ordered Captain 
Waddell to discharge the workmen (August 11, 1757); and every effort was 
made for many months thereafter to conciliate the Catawbas, erstwhile 
friends of North Carolina. The Catawba fort erected by North Carolina was 
never fully completed; and several years later South Carolina, having 
succeeded in alienating the Catawbas from North Carolina, which colony had 
given them the best possible treatment, built for them a fort at the mouth 
of Line Creek on the east bank of the Catawba River.

In the spring and summer of 1758 the long expected Indian allies arrived 
in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May--Cherokees, Catawbas, 
Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly unable to use them 
effectively; and in order to provide amusement for them, he directed that 
they should go "a scalping" with the whites--"a barbarous method of war," 
frankly acknowledged the governor, "introduced by the French, which we are 
oblidged to follow in our own defense." Most of the Indian allies 
discontentedly returned home before the end of the year, but the remainder 
waited until the next year, to take part in the campaign against Fort 
Duquesne. Three North Carolina companies, composed of trained soldiers and 
hardy frontiersmen, went through this campaign under the command of Major 
Hugh Waddell, the "Washington of North Carolina." Long of limb and broad 
of chest, powerful, lithe, and active, Waddell was an ideal leader for 
this arduous service, being fertile in expedient and skilful in the 
employment of Indian tactics. With true provincial pride Governor Dobbs 
records that Waddell "had great honor done him, being employed in all 
reconnoitring parties, and dressed and acted as an Indian; and his 
sergeant, Rogers, took the only Indian prisoner, who gave Mr. Forbes 
certain intelligence of the forces in Fort Duquesne, upon which they 
resolved to proceed." This apparently trivial incident is remarkable, in 
that it proved to be the decisive factor in a campaign that was about to 
be abandoned. The information in regard to the state of the garrison at 
Fort Duquesne, secured from the Indian, for the capture of whom two 
leading officers had offered a reward of two hundred and fifty pounds, 
emboldened Forbes to advance rather than to retire. Upon reaching the fort 
(November 25th), he found it abandoned by the enemy. Sergeant Rogers never 
received the reward promised by General Forbes and the other English 
officer; but some time afterward he was compensated by a modest sum from 
the colony of North Carolina.

A series of unfortunate occurrences, chiefly the fault of the whites, soon 
resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian outbreak. A party of 
Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray horses on the 
frontier of Virginia--never dreaming of any wrong, says an old historian, 
as they saw it frequently done by the whites. The owners of the horses, 
hastily forming a party, went in pursuit of the Indians and killed twelve 
or fourteen of the number. The relatives of the slain Indians, greatly 
incensed, vowed vengeance upon the whites. Nor was the tactless conduct of 
Forbes calculated to quiet this resentment; for when Atta-kulla-kulla and 
nine other chieftains deserted in disgust at the treatment accorded them, 
they were pursued by Forbes's orders, apprehended and disarmed. This rude 
treatment, coupled with the brutal and wanton murder of some Cherokee 
hunters a little earlier, by an irresponsible band of Virginians under 
Captain Robert Wade, still further aggravated the Indians.

Incited by the French, who had fled to the southward after the fall of 
Fort Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indians rushed down upon the 
settlements and left in their path death and desolation along the 
frontiers of the Carolinas. On the upper branch of the Yadkin and below 
the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbs twenty-two whites fell in swift 
succession before the secret onslaughts of the savages from the lower 
Cherokee towns. Many of the settlers along the Yadkin fled to the Carolina 
Fort at Bethabara and the stockade at the mill; and the sheriff of Rowan 
County suffered siege by the Cherokees, in his home, until rescued by a 
detachment under Brother Loesch from Bethabara. While many families took 
refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen under Captain Morgan Bryan ranged 
through the mountains to the west of Salisbury and guarded the settlements 
from the hostile incursions of the savages. So gravely alarmed were the 
Rowan settlers, compelled by the Indians to desert their planting and 
crops, that Colonel Harris was despatched post-haste for aid to Cape Fear, 
arriving there on July 1st. With strenuous energy Captain Waddell, then 
stationed in the east, rushed two companies of thirty men each to the 
rescue, sending by water-carriage six swivel guns and ammunition on before 
him; and these reinforcements brought relief at last to the harassed Rowan 
frontiers." During the remainder of the year, the borders were kept clear 
by bold and tireless rangers-under the leadership of expert Indian 
fighters of the stamp of Grifth Rutherford and Morgan Bryan.

When the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the North Carolina 
border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, they proudly displayed 
the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowan settlers. Upon the demand for 
these scalps by Captain Demere at Fort Loudon and under direction of Atta-
kulla-kulla, the Settiquo warriors surrendered eleven of the scalps to 
Captain Demere who, according to custom in time of peace, buried them. New 
murders on Pacolet and along the Virginia Path, which occurred shortly 
afterward, caused gloomy forebodings; and it was plain, says a 
contemporary gazette, that "the lower Cherokees were not satisfied with 
the murder of the Rowan settlers, but intended further mischief". On 
October 1st and again on October 31st, Governor Dobbs received urgent 
requests from Governor Lyttelton, asking that the North Carolina 
provincials and militia cooperate to bring him assistance. Although there 
was no law requiring the troops to march out of the province and the 
exposed frontiers of North Carolina sorely needed protection, Waddell, now 
commissioned colonel, assembled a force of five small companies and 
marched to the aid of Governor Lyttelton. But early in January, 1760, 
while on the march, Waddell received a letter from Lyttelton, informing 
him that the assistance was not needed and that a treaty of peace had been 
negotiated with the Cherokees. 



CHAPTER VI.
CRUSHING THE CHEROKEES

Thus ended the Cherokee war, which was among the last humbling strokes 
given to the expiring power of France in North America.
--Hewatt: An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies 
of South Carolina and Georgia. 1779.

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 Si-lou-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."

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):

"For several Days I observed a small party of Indians were constantly 
about the fort, I sent out several parties after them to no purpose, the 
Evening before last between 8 & 9 o'clock I found by the Dogs making an 
uncommon Noise there must be a party nigh a Spring which we sometimes use. 
As my Garrison is but small, and I was apprehensive it might be a scheme 
to draw out the Garrison, I took our Capt. Bailie who with myself and 
party made up ten: We had not marched 300 yds. from the fort when we were 
attacked by at least 60 or 70 Indians. I had given my party Orders not to 
fire until I gave the word, which they punctually observed: We rec'd the 
Indians' fire: When I perceived they had almost all fired, I ordered my 
party to fire which We did not further than 12 steps each loaded with a 
Bullet and 7 Buck Shot, they had nothing to cover them as they were 
advancing either to tomahawk us or make us Prisoners: They found the fire 
very hot from so small a Number which a good deal confused them: I then 
ordered my party to retreat, as I found the Instant our skirmish began 
another party had attacked the fort, upon our reinforcing the garrison the 
Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure a considerable Loss, from what I 
myself saw as well as those I can confide in they cou'd not have less than 
10 or 12 killed and wounded; The next Morning we found a great deal of 
Blood and one dead whom I suppose they cou'd not find in the night. On my 
side I had 2 Men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he is 
scalped, the other is in way of Recovery, and one boy killed near the fort 
whom they durst not advance to scalp. I expected they would have paid me 
another visit last night, as they attack all Fortifications by Night, but 
find they did not like their Reception."

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.

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 Ruthe ford, 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 Fort 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.

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 way 
faring 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.

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.

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 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 bloodcurdling 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 London.

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 cooperate 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 regiment being organized by 
Colonel Thomas Middleton. 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.

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 l0th 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.



CHAPTER VII.
THE LAND COMPANIES

It was thought good policy to settle those lands as fast as possible, and 
that the granting them to men of the first consequence who were likeliest 
and best able to procure large bodies of people to settle on them was the 
most probable means of effecting the end proposed.
--Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia to the Earl of Hillsborough: 1770. 

Although for several decades the Virginia traders had been passing over 
the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokees and the Catawbas, it 
was not until the early years of the eighteenth century that Virginians of 
imaginative vision directed their eyes to the westward, intent upon 
crossing the mountains and locating settlements as a firm barrier against 
the imperialistic designs of France. Acting upon his oft-expressed 
conviction that once the English settlers had established themselves at 
the source of the James River "it would not be in the power of the French 
to dislodge them," Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1716, animated with the 
spirit of the pioneer, led an expedition of fifty men and a train of pack-
horses to the mountains, arduously ascended to the summit of the Blue 
Ridge, and claimed the country by right of discovery in behalf of his 
sovereign. In the journal of John Fontaine this vivacious account is given 
of the historic episode: "I graved my name on a tree by the river side; 
and the Governor buried a bottle with a paper enclosed on which he writ 
that he took possession of this place in the name and for King George the 
First of England. We had a good dinner, and after it we got the men 
together and loaded all their arms and we drank the King's health in 
Burgundy and fired a volley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in 
claret and a volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another 
volley."

By this jovial picnic, which the governor afterward commemorated by 
presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him a golden 
horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvat transcendere montes, 
Alexander Spotswood anticipated by a third of a century the more ambitious 
expedition on behalf of France by Celoron de Bienville (see Chapter III), 
and gave a memorable object-lesson in the true spirit of westward 
expansion. During the ensuing years it began to dawn upon the minds of men 
of the stamp of William Byrd and Joshua Gee that there was imperative need 
for the establishment of a chain of settlements in the trans-Alleghany, a 
great human wall to withstand the advancing wave of French influence and 
occupation. By the fifth decade of the century, as we have seen, the 
Virginia settlers, with their squatter's claims and tomahawk rights, had 
pushed on to the mountains; and great pressure was brought to bear upon 
the council to issue grants for vast tracts of land in the uncharted 
wilderness of the interior.

At this period the English ministry adopted the aggressive policy already 
mentioned in connection with the French and Indian war, indicative of a 
determination to contest with France the right to occupy the interior of 
the continent. This policy had been inaugurated by Virginia with the 
express purpose of stimulating the adoption of a similar policy by North 
Carolina and Pennsylvania. Two land companies, organized almost 
simultaneously, actively promoted the preliminaries necessary to 
settlement, despatching parties under expert leadership to discover the 
passes through the mountains and to locate the best land in the trans-
Alleghany.

In June, 1749, a great corporation, the Loyal Land Company of Virginia, 
received a grant of eight hundred thousand acres above the North Carolina 
line and west of the mountains. Dr. Thomas Walker, an expert surveyor, who 
in company with several other gentlemen had made a tour of exploration 
through eastern Tennessee and the Holston region in 1748, was chosen as 
the agent of this company. Starting from his home in Albemarle County, 
Virginia, March 6, 1750, accompanied by five stalwart pioneers, Walker 
made a tour of exploration to the westward, being absent four months and 
one week. On this journey, which carried the party as far west as the 
Rockcastle River (May 11th) and as far north as the present Paintsville, 
Kentucky, they named many natural objects, such as mountains and rivers, 
after members of the party. Their two principal achievements were the 
erection of the first house built by white men between the Cumberland 
Mountains and the Ohio River a feat, however, which led to no important 
developments; and the discovery of the wonderful gap in the Alleghanies to 
which Walker gave the name Cumberland, in honor of the ruthless conqueror 
at Culloden, the "bloody duke."

In 1748 the Ohio Company was organized by Colonel Thomas Lee, president of 
the Virginia council, and twelve other gentlemen, of Virginia and 
Maryland. In their petition for five hundred thousand acres, one of the 
declared objects of the company was "to anticipate the French by taking 
possession of that country southward of the Lakes to which the French had 
no right . . . ." By the royal order of May 19, 1749, the company was 
awarded two hundred thousand acres, free of quit-rent for ten years; and 
the promise was made of an additional award of the remainder petitioned 
for, on condition of seating a hundred families upon the original grant 
and the building and maintaining of a fort. Christopher Gist, summoned 
from his remote home on the Yadkin in North Carolina, was instructed "to 
search out and discover the Lands upon the river Ohio & other adjoining 
branches of the Mississippi down as low as the great Falls thereof." In 
this journey, which began at Colonel Thomas Cresap's, in Maryland, in 
October, 1750, and ended at Gist's home on May 18, 1751, Gist visited the 
Lower Shawnee Town and the Lower Blue Licks, ascended Pilot Knob almost 
two decades before Find lay and Boone, from the same eminence, "saw with 
pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky," intersected Walker's route at 
two points, and crossed Cumberland Mountain at Pound Gap on the return 
journey. This was a far more extended journey than Walker's, enabling Gist 
to explore the fertile valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers 
and to gain a view of the beautiful meadows of Kentucky. 

It is eminently significant of the spirit of the age, which was 
inaugurating an era of land hunger unparalleled in American history, that 
the first authentic records of the trans-Alleghany were made by surveyors 
who visited the country as the agents of great land companies. The 
outbreak of the French and Indian War so soon afterward delayed for a 
decade and more any important colonization of the West. Indeed, the 
explorations and findings of Walker and Gist were almost unknown, even to 
the companies they represented. But the conclusion of peace in 1763, which 
gave all the region between the mountains and the Mississippi to the 
British, heralded the true beginning of the westward expansionist movement 
in the Old Southwest, and inaugurated the constructive leadership of North 
Carolina in f he occupation and colonization of the imperial domain of 
Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.

In the middle years of the century many families of Virginia gentry 
removed to the back country of North Carolina in the fertile region 
ranging from Williamsborough on the east to Hillsborough on the west. 
There soon arose in this section of the colony a society marked by 
intellectual distinction, social graces, and the leisured dignity of the 
landlord and the large planter. So conspicuous for means, intellect, 
culture, and refinement were the people of this group, having "abundance 
of wealth and leisure for enjoyment," that Governor Josiah Martin, in 
passing through this region some years later, significantly observes: 
"They have great preeminence, as well with respect to soil and 
cultivation, as to the manners and condition of the inhabitants, in which 
last respect the difference is so great that one would be led to think 
them people of another region." This new wealthy class which was now 
turning its gaze toward the unoccupied lands along the frontier was 
"dominated by the democratic ideals of pioneers rather than by the 
aristocratic tendencies of slave-holding planters." From the cross-
fertilization of the ideas of two social groups--this back-country gentry, 
of innate qualities of leadership, democratic instincts, economic 
independence, and expansive tendencies, and the primitive pioneer society 
of the frontier, frugal in taste, responsive to leadership, bold, ready, 
and thorough in execution--there evolved the militant American expansion 
in the Old Southwest.

A conspicuous figure in this society of Virginia emigrants was a young man 
named Richard Henderson, whose father had removed with his family from 
Hanover County, Virginia, to Bute, afterward Granville County, North 
Carolina, in 1742. Educated at home by a private tutor, he began his 
career as assistant of his father, Samuel Henderson, the High Sheriff of 
Granville County; and after receiving a law-license, quickly acquired an 
extensive practice. "Even in the superior courts where oratory and 
eloquence are as brilliant and powerful as in Westminster hall," records 
an English acquaintance, "he soon became distinguished and eminent, and 
his superior genius shone forth with great splendour, and universal 
applause." This young attorney, wedded to the daughter of an Irish lord, 
often visited Salisbury on his legal circuit; and here he became well 
acquainted with Squire Boone, one of the "Worshipfull Justices," and often 
appeared in suits before him. By his son, the nomadic Daniel Boone, 
conspicuous already for his solitary wanderings across the dark green 
mountains to the sun-lit valleys and boundless hunting-grounds beyond, 
Henderson was from time to time regaled with bizarre and fascinating tales 
of western exploration; and Boone, in his dark hour of poverty and 
distress, when he was heavily involved financially, turned for aid to this 
friend and his partner, who composed the law-firm of Williams and 
Henderson.

Boone's vivid descriptions of the paradise of the West stimulated 
Henderson's imaginative mind and attracted his attention to the rich 
possibilities of unoccupied lands there. While the Board of Trade in 
drafting the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, forbade the granting 
of lands in the vast interior, which was specifically reserved to the 
Indians, it was clearly not their intention to set permanent western 
limits to the colonies. The prevailing opinion among the shrewdest men of 
the period was well expressed by George Washington, who wrote his agent 
for preempting western lands: "I can never look upon that proclamation in 
any other light (but I say this between ourselves) than as a temporary 
expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians." And again in 1767: "It (the 
proclamation of 1763) must fall, of course, in a few years, especially 
when those Indians consent to our occupying the lands. Any person, 
therefore, who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands, 
and in some measure marking out and distinguishing them for his own, in 
order to keep others from settling them, will never regain it." Washington 
had added greatly to his holdings of bounty lands in the West by 
purchasing at trivial prices the claims of many of the officers and 
soldiers. Three years later we find him surveying extensive tracts along 
the Ohio and the Great Kanawha, and, with the vision of the expansionist, 
making large plans for the establishment of a colony to be seated upon his 
own lands. Henderson, too, recognized the importance of the great country 
west of the Appalachians. He agreed with the opinion of Benjamin Franklin, 
who in 1756 called it "one of the finest in North America for the extreme 
richness and fertility of the land, the healthy temperature of the air and 
the mildness of the climate, the plenty of hunting, fishing and fowling, 
the facility of trade with the Indians and the vast convenience of inland 
navigation or water carriage." Henderson therefore proceeded to organize a 
land company for the purpose of acquiring and colonizing a large domain in 
the West. This partnership, which was entitled Richard Henderson and 
Company, was composed of a few associates, including Richard Henderson, 
his uncle and law-partner, John Williams, and, in all probability, their 
close friends Thomas and Nathaniel Hart of Orange County, North Carolina, 
immigrants from Hanover County, Virginia.

Seizing the opportunity presented just after the conclusion of peace, the 
company engaged Daniel Boone as scout and surveyor. He was instructed, 
while hunting and trapping on his own account, to examine, with respect to 
their location and fertility, the lands which he visited, and to report 
his findings upon his return. The secret expedition must have been 
transacted with commendable circumspection; for although in after years it 
became common knowledge among his friends that he had acted as the 
company's agent, Boone himself consistently refrained from betraying the 
confidence of his employers. Upon a similar mission, Gist had carefully 
concealed from the suspicious Indians the fact that he carried a compass, 
which they wittily termed "land stealer"; and Washington likewise imposed 
secrecy upon his land agent Crawford, insisting that the operation be 
carried on under the guise of hunting game." The discreet Boone, taciturn 
and given to keeping his own counsel, in one instance at least deemed it 
advantageous to communicate the purpose of his mission to some hunters, 
well known to him, in order to secure the results of their information in 
regard to the best lands they had encountered in the course of their 
hunting expedition. Boone came among the hunters, known as the "Blevens 
connection," at one of their Tennessee station camps on their return from 
a long hunt in Kentucky, in order, as expressed in the quaint phraseology 
of the period, to be "informed of the geography and locography of these 
woods, saying that he was employed to explore them by Henderson & 
Company." The acquaintance which Boone on this occasion formed with a 
member of the party, Henry Scaggs, the skilled hunter and explorer, was 
soon to bear fruit; for shortly afterward Scaggs was employed as 
prospector by the same land company. In 1764 Scaggs had passed through 
Cumberland Gap and hunted for the season on the Cumberland; and 
accordingly the following year, as the agent of Richard Henderson and 
Company, he was despatched on an extended exploration to the lower 
Cumberland, fixing his station at the salt lick afterward known as 
Mansker's Lick.

Richard Henderson thus, it appears, "enlisted the Harts and others in an 
enterprise which his own genius planned," says Peck, the personal 
acquaintance and biographer of Boone, "and then encouraged several hunters 
to explore the country and learn where the best lands lay." Just why 
Henderson and his associates did not act sooner upon the reports brought 
back by the hunters--Boone and Scaggs and Callaway, who accompanied Boone 
in 1764 in the interest of the land company "is not known; but in all 
probability the fragmentary nature of these reports, however glowing and 
enthusiastic, was sufficient cause for the delay of five years before the 
land company, through the agency of Boone and Findlay, succeeded in having 
a thorough exploration inside of the Kentucky region. Delay was also 
caused by rival claims to the territory. In the Virginia Gazette of 
December 1, 1768, Henderson must have read with astonishment not unmixed 
with dismay that "the Six Nations and all their tributaries have granted a 
vast extent of country to his majesty, and the Proprietaries of 
Pennsylvania, and settled an advantageous boundary line between their 
hunting country and this, and the other colonies to the Southward as far 
as the Cherokee River, for which they received the most valuable present 
in goods and dollars that was ever given at any conference since the 
settlement of America." The news was now bruited about through the colony 
of North Carolina, that the Cherokees were hot in their resentment because 
the Northern Indians, the inveterate foes of the Cherokees and the 
perpetual disputants for the vast Middle Ground of Kentucky, had received 
at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, November 5, 1768, an immense compensation 
from the crown for the territory which they, the Cherokees, claimed from 
time immemorial. Only three weeks before, John Stuart, Superintendent for 
Indian Affairs in the Southern Department, had negotiated with the 
Cherokees the Treaty of Hard Labor, South Carolina (October 14th), by 
which Governor Tryon's line of 1767, from Reedy River to Tryon Mountain, 
was continued direct to Colonel Chiswell's mine, the present Wytheville, 
Virginia, and thence in a straight Brie to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. 
Thus at the close of the year 1768 the crown through both royal governor 
and superintendent of Indian affairs acknowledged in fair and open treaty 
the right of the Cherokees, whose Tennessee villages guarded the gateway, 
to the valley lands east of the mountain barrier as well as to the dim mid-
region of Kentucky. In the very act of negotiating the Treaty of Fort 
Stanwix, Sir William Johnson privately acknowledged that possession of the 
trans-Alleghany could be legally obtained only by extinguishing the title 
of the Cherokees.

These conflicting claims soon led to collisions between the Indians and 
the company's settlers. In the spring of 1769 occurred one of those 
incidents in the westward advance which, though slight in itself, was to 
have a definite bearing upon the course of events in later years. In 
pursuance of his policy, as agent of the Loyal Land Company, of promoting 
settlement upon the company's lands, Dr. Thomas Walker, who had visited 
Powell's Valley the preceding year and come into possession of a very 
large tract there, simultaneously made proposals to one party of men 
including the Kirtleys, Captain Rucker, and others, and to another party 
led by Joseph Martin, trader of Orange County, Virginia, afterward a 
striking figure in the Old Southwest. The fevered race by these bands of 
eighteenth-century "sooners" for possession of an early "Cherokee Strip" 
was won by the latter band, who at once took possession and began to 
clear; so that when the Kirtleys arrived, Martin coolly handed them "a 
letter from Dr. Walker that informed them that if we got to the valley 
first, we were to have 21,000 acres of land, and they were not to 
interfere with us." Martin and his companions were delighted with the 
beautiful valley at the base of the Cumberland, quickly "eat and destroyed 
23 deer--15 bears--2 buffaloes and a great quantity of turkeys," and 
entertained gentlemen from Virginia and Maryland who desired to settle 
more than a hundred families there. The company reckoned, however, without 
their hosts, the Cherokees, who, fortified by the treaty of Hard Labor 
(1768) which left this country within the Indian reservation, were 
determined to drive Martin and his company out. While hunting on the 
Cumberland River, northwest of Cumberland Gap, Martin and his company were 
surrounded and disarmed by a party of Cherokees who said they had orders 
from Cameron, the royal agent, to rob all white men hunting on their 
lands. When Martin and his party arrived at their station in Powell's 
Valley, they found it broken up and their goods stolen by the Indians, 
which left them no recourse but to return to the settlements in Virginia. 
It was not until six years later that Martin, under the stable influence 
of the Transylvania Company, was enabled to return to this spot and erect 
there the station which was to play an integral part in the progress of 
westward expansion.

Before going on to relate Boone's explorations of Kentucky under the 
auspices of the land company, it will be convenient to turn back for a 
moment and give some account of other hunters and explorers who visited 
that territory between the time of its discovery by Walker and Gist and 
the advent of Boone.