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Chapter 15:
Invasion of the
valley of the Tennessee.—
Pitts administration continued.
1759-1760.
the capitulation of
Quebec was received by
Townshend, as though the achievement had been his own; and his narrative of the battle left out the name of
Wolfe, whom he indirectly censured.
He had himself come over for a single summer's campaign, to be afterwards gloried about and rewarded.
1 As he hurried from the citadel, which he believed untenable, back to the secure gayeties of
London,
Charles Paxton, an American by birth, one of the revenue officers of
Boston, ever on the alert to propitiate members of government and men of influence with ministers, purchased
2 his future favor, which might bring with it that of his younger brother, by lending him money that was never to be repaid.
Such was the usage of those days.
Officers of the customs gave as their excuse for habitually permitting evasions of the laws of trade, that it was their
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only mode of getting rich; for they were ‘quartered
upon’ by their English patrons for more than the amount of all their honest perquisites.
3 Townshend returned home, to advocate governing America by concentrating power in
England; and like
Braddock,
Sharpe,
Shirley,
Abercrombie,
Loudoun,
Gage, and so many more of his profession, to look upon taxation of the colonies by the metropolis as the exercise of a necessary duty.
In
Georgia,
Ellis, the able governor, who had great influence in the public offices, was studying how the colonies could be administered by the central authority.
In
South Carolina Lyttleton persuaded himself that he had restored the royal sway.
Yet the fruits of his administration were distrust and discontent.
The arbitrary manner in which he had suspended a councillor, had even made it a matter of pride with the planters of
Carolina not to accept appointments to the royal council;
4 and their confiding loyalty was requited by contemptuous insolence, more difficult to be endured than oppression.
While victory protected the northern frontiers of
America, the
South would have enjoyed unbroken repose but for the pride of
Lyttleton, who at once contended with
South Carolina, ‘to regain the powers of government which his predecessors,’ as he said, ‘had unfaithfully given away,’
5 and awakened an Indian war by his zeal for reducing the native mountaineers to his own criminal code.
He could not discern
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in the red man's morals the eternal principles
which inspire all justice; and as he brought the maxims of civilized society into conflict with the unwritten law of the Cherokees, the
European rule proved the most treacherous and cruel.
The
Cherokees had ever been in friendship with the
English, as
Virginia had acknowledged in 1755 by a deputation with a present.
In 1757, their warriors had volunteered to protect the
American frontier south of the
Potomac; yet, after they had won trophies of honor in the
general service, they were disregarded by the
State, and would have been left to return without reward, or even supplies of food, but for the generosity of
Washington and his officers.
6
The parties, which, in the following year, joined the expedition to the
Ohio, were neglected, so that their hearts told them to return to their cherished highlands.
7 In July, 1758, the backwoodsmen of
Virginia, finding that their half-starved allies took what they needed on their way home, seized their arms, and, in three skirmishes, several of the ‘beloved men’ of the Cherokees were slain and scalped.
8
The wailing of the women for their deceased relatives, at the dawn of each day and at the gray of the evening, provoked the nation to retaliate.
‘The blood of your beloved kinsmen calls for revenge,’ cried the Muskohgees; and the chiefs of the Cherokees sent out their young men to take what they deemed such just and equal vengeance as became good warriors.
9 The upland settlements of North
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Carolina ceased to be safe; of the garrison at Telli-
quo, two soldiers fell victims.
In November, 1758, Tiftoe and five other chieftains came down from their mountains to
Charleston to reconcile differences and treat of an amnesty.
10 The old covenant between them and the
English, of which one of the clauses stipulated that murderers should be given up, was revived; they accepted presents to cover up their losses, and gave pledges of inviolable peace.
Before the return of the delegates of the remote upper towns,
11 warriors of Settico on the
Tennessee and of Telliquo had been out
12 on the
Yadkin and the
Catawba, beyond the jurisdiction of
South Carolina; but the
Cherokee chiefs themselves interposed to recall them, and soothed their anger.
It now seemed to them, that aggression and equal revenge had reciprocally done their work, and that harmony was restored.
Not so reasoned
Lyttleton, who could not hear the voice of humanity as it spoke from the mountain glades.
The legislators of
Carolina, who understood the jurisprudence of forest life, meeting at
Charleston in March, 1759, refused to consider hostilities with the Cherokees as existing, or to be apprehended; but
Lyttleton set aside their decision as an invasion of the prerogative, which alone could treat of peace or war, and give directions for training and employing the militia.
Having inflamed the colonists by asserting authority
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so exclusive, he next made a demand on the
Head-
men and Warriors of the towns on the branches of the
Tennessee, to ‘give him satisfaction for the past,’
13‘by which,’ as he explained, was ‘meant that a certain number of Cherokees guilty of the murders, should be delivered up or be put to death in their nation.’
14 ‘This would only make bad worse,’ answered the
Red Men; ‘the
Great Warrior will never consent to it;’ at the same time they entreated peace.
15 ‘We live at present in great harmony,’ wrote
Demere from
Fort Loudoun; ‘and there are no bad talks.’
16
Tranquillity and confidence were returning, but in obedience to orders,
17 Demere insisted on the surrender or execution of the offending chiefs of Settico and Telliquo, while
Coytmore, at Fort Prince George, intercepted all ammunition and merchandise on their way to the
Upper Nation.
Consternation spread along the mountain sides; the hand of the young men grasped at the tomahawk; the warriors spoke much together concerning Settico and Telliquo,
18 and hostile speeches went round.
Still they dispatched to
Charleston a letter with friendly strings of wampum; while the
Middle and the
Lower Settlements, which had taken no part in the expedition complained of, sent also their belts of white shells.
19
But
Lyttleton, dreading some concert of the Cherokees with the
Creeks, rigorously enforced the
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interruption of trade as a chastisement; and haughtily
added, ‘if you desire peace with us, and will send deputies to me as the mouth of your nation, I promise you, you shall come and return in safety.’
The
Indians had become dependent on civilization; and to withhold supplies, was not only like a general embargo, but also like disarming a nation.
The
English, said they, would leave us defenseless, that they may utterly destroy us. Jealousy spread from wigwam to wigwam; belts circulated more and more among the villages.
They feared the worst,
20 and narrowly watched the roads, that no white man might pass.
‘We have nothing to do,’ said some among them, wild with rage, ‘but to kill the white people here, and carry their scalps to the
French, who will supply us with plenty of ammunition and every thing else.’
21 The nation was, however, far from being united against the
English; a large number of towns were even ready, if they had been encouraged, to fight on their side;
22 but the general distrust announced the approach of war.
23
Lyttleton, hurried on by zeal to display authority, and eager to gain the glory of conducting an unusual expedition against the Cherokees, instantly gave orders to the colonels of three regiments of militia nearest the frontier to fire an alarm and assemble their corps; called out all the regulars and provincials in
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Charleston; asked aid of the governors of
Georgia and
North Carolina; invited
Virginia to send reinfor cements and supplies to
Fort Loudoun by the road from that province; sought the active alliance of the Chickasaws as ancient enemies to the
French;
24 of the Catawbas, the Tuscaroras, and even the
Creeks, whose hostility he pretended to have feared;
25 and then convening the legislature, on the fifth of October sent a message to the Assembly for supplies.
Aware of his intentions to make a declaration of war, they addressed him against so precipitate a measure, ‘unanimously desiring him to defer it.’
He readily consented,
26 promising that ‘he would do nothing to prevent an accommodation,’ on which the Assembly made grants of money and provided for calling fifteen hundred men into service, if necessary.
The perfidious governor reproved them for the scantiness of the supply; and breaking his promise, not yet a day old, he added that ‘he should persevere in his intended measures.’
27
On the twelfth of October, he ordered the alarm to be fired in all parts of the province, where it had not been before; and ‘one half of the militia was draughted to be in readiness to repel any invasion, or suppress any insurrection that might happen during his absence.’
But hardly had the word been spoken when, on the seventeenth of October, a great deputation from the
Upper and Lower Towns, Oconostata the great warrior himself, with thirty other of the most honored
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men, relying on their safe conduct from the gov-
ernor, arrived in
Charleston to deplore all deeds of violence, and to say that their nation truly loved peace.
Bull, the discreet lieutenant governor, urged the wisdom of making an agreement, before more blood should be spilt.
28 The
Cherokees were unequivocally sincere; and many of their towns were thor, oughly devoted to the
English.
29
‘I am come,’ said Oconostata in council on the eighteenth, ‘to hearken to what you have to say, and to deliver words of friendship.’
But
Lyttleton would not speak to them, saying: ‘I did not invite you to come down; I only permitted you to do so; therefore, you are to expect no talk from me, till I hear what you have to say.’
30
The next day, the proud
Oconostata condescended to recount what had been ill done; explained its causes; declared that the great
civil chief of the Cherokees loved and respected the
English; and making an offering of deer-skins, and pleading for a renewal of trade, he added for himself: ‘I love the white people; they and the Indians shall not hurt one another; I reckon myself as one with you.’
31
Tiftoe of Keowee complained of
Coytmore, the officer in command at Fort Prince George, as intemperate and licentious.
The former commander had been more acceptable to them.
But still he would hold the
English fast by the hand.—The head warrior of
Estatoe would have ‘the trade go on, and no more blood spilt.’—Killianaca, the
Black Dog of
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Hiwassie, was able to say that no English blood had
ever been spilled by the young men of his village; and he gave assurances of peace from all the towns in his region.
But the governor, by a precipitate exercise of the prerogative, had, against the wish of the province, called out the militia, and invited the governors of
Georgia,
North Carolina, and
Virginia, the warriors of the Catawbas, Chickasaws, Creeks, Tuscaroras, and other friendly
Indians, to join his expedition; and therefore, in spite of the opposition of four of his council,
32 he went on. ‘I am now going with a great many of my warriors to your nation,’ said he finally to the deputies, ‘in order to demand satisfaction of them.
If you will not give it, when I come to your nation, I shall take it.’
Oconostata, and those with him, claimed for themselves the benefit of the safe conduct under which they had come down.
And
Lyttleton spoke, concealing his purpose under words more false than the wiles of the savage: ‘You, Oconostata, and all with you, shall return in safety to your own country; and it is not my intention to hurt a hair of your head.
There is but one way by which I can insure your safety; you shall go with my warriors, and they shall protect you.’
33
On Friday, the twenty-seventh,
Lyttleton, with the
Cherokee envoys, left
Charleston to repair to
Congaree, the gathering place for the militia of
Carolina.
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Thither came Christopher Gadsden,
34 born in
1724, long the colonial representative of
Charleston, dear to his constituents; at whose instance and under whose command an artillery company had just been formed, in a province which till then had not had a mounted field-piece.
There, too, was the heroic
Francis Marion,
35 as yet an untried soldier, just six-and twenty, the youngest of five sons of an impoverished planter, reserved and silent, small in stature, and of a slender frame, so temperate that he drank only water, elastic, persevering, and of sincerest purity of soul.
36 Yet the state of the troops, both as to equipments and temper, was such as might have been expected from the suddenness of their summons to take the field against the judgment of their legislature.
It was still hoped that there would be no occasion to make use of them.
37 Before leaving
Congaree, Oconostata and his associates, though their persons were sacred by the laws of savage and of civilized man, were arrested; and on arriving at Fort Prince George, they were crowded into a hut hardly large enough for six of them.
To Attakulla-kulla, the Little Carpenter, a feeble old man, who in 1730 had been in
England, but now had little influence with the tribe,
Lyttleton, on the eighteenth day of December, 1759, pronounced a very long speech, rehearsing the conditions of their treaty.
‘There are twenty-four men of your nation,’ said he, ‘whom I demand to be delivered up to me, to be put to death, or otherwise disposed of, as I shall think fit.
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Your people have killed that number of ours, and
more, and therefore that is the least I will accept of I shall give you till to-morrow morning to consider of it, and then I shall expect your answer.’
38 ‘I have ever been the firm friend of the
English,’ answered the chief; ‘I will ever continue so; but for giving up the men, we have no authority one over another.’
Yet after the governor had exchanged Oconostata and one or two more for other
Indians, he sent again to Attakulla-kulla, and on the twenty-sixth of December got the signature of six Cherokees to a treaty of peace, which seemed to sanction the governor's retaining the imprisoned envoys as hostages, till four andtwenty men should be delivered up to undergo punishment for the murders.
It was further covenanted that the
French should not be received in their towns, and that the
English traders should be safe.
This treaty was not made by chiefs duly authorized, nor ratified in council; nor could Indian usage give effect to its conditions.
Hostages are unknown in the forest, where prisoners are slaves.
No one was deceived.
39 Lyttleton, in fact, had only with profligate falsehood violated the word he had plighted, and retained in prison the ambassadors of peace, true friends to the
English, ‘the beloved men’ of the Cherokees, who had come to him under his own safe conduct.
And yet he gloried in having obtained concessions such as savage man had never before granted; and, returning to
Charleston, he took to himself the honor of a triumphant entry.
The
Cherokees longed to secure peace; but the
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young braves, whose names were already honor-
ed in the glades of
Tennessee, could not be surrendered to death or servitude; and Oconostata resolved to rescue the hostages.
The commandant at Fort Prince George was allured to a dark thicket by the river side, and was shot by Indians in an ambush.
The garrison had reason to be incensed; but in their anger, they butchered every one of their unfortunate prisoners, and to conceal the atrocity of their crime, invented foolish falsehoods of a plan that their hostages had formed to poison the wells of the garrison.
40
At the news of the massacre, the villages of which there was scarce one that did not wail for a chief, quivered with anger, like a chafed rattlesnake in the heats of midsummer.
The ‘spirits,’ said they, ‘of our murdered brothers are flying around us, screaming for vengeance.’
The mountains echoed the warsong; and the braves dashed upon the frontiers for scalps, even to the skirts of Ninety-Six.
In their attack on that fort, several of them fell.
‘We fatten our dogs with their carcasses,’ wrote Francis to
Lyttleton; ‘and display their scalps, neatly ornamented, on the tops of our bastions.’
41 Yet
Fort Loudoun, on the
Tennessee, was exposed to the savages, beyond the reach of succor.
42 From
Louisiana43 the Cherokees obtained military stores; and, extending their alliance, they exchanged with the restless
Muskohgees the swans' wings painted with
red and
black, and crimsoned tomahawks, that were the emblems of war.
44
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Carolina was now in conflict with the moun-
taineers.
Yet, at the meeting of the legislature in February, 1760, the delegates, still more alarmed at the unwarrantable interference of
Lyttleton with the usages of colonial liberty, first of all vindicated ‘their birthrights as British subjects,’ and resisted ‘the violation of undoubted privileges.’
But no governor was more esteemed by the
Lords of Trade; they never could find words strong enough to express their approbation of his whole conduct.
His zeal for the prerogative, and his powerful connections in
England gained him advancement; and he was not only transferred from
South Carolina to the more lucrative government of
Jamaica, but directed to return home to receive his instructions, a direction which implied a wish on the part of the Board of Trade to consult him on questions of colonial administration.
45
In April,
General Amherst, whose thoughts were all intent upon
Canada, detached from the central army that had conquered
Ohio six hundred Highlanders and six hundred Royal
Americans under
Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Lord Eglinton, and
Major Grant, to strike a sudden blow at the Cherokees and return.
At Ninety-Six, near the end of May, they joined seven hundred Carolina rangers, among whom
Moultrie, and, as some think,
Marion, served as officers.
On the first day of June, the little army, after a march of eighteen miles from
Beaver Dams, crossed Twelve-mile River; and leaving their tents standing
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on advantageous ground, at eight in the evening they
moved onward through the woods to surprise
Estatoe, which was twenty-five miles distant. The baying of a watch-dog alarmed the village of Little Keowee, when the
English rushed upon its people and killed nearly all except women and children.
Early in the morning, they arrived at
Estatoe, which its inhabitants had but just abandoned, leaving their mats still warm.
The vale of Keowee
46 is famed for its beauty and fertility, extending for seven or eight miles, till a high, narrow ridge of hills comes down on each side to the river.
Below the ridge it opens again for ten or twelve miles more.
This lovely region was the delight of the Cherokees; the sides of the adjacent hills bore their habitations, and on the rich level ground beneath stood their fields of maize, all clambered over by the prolific bean.
The mountain-sides blushed with flowers in their season, and resounded with the melody of birds.
The river now flowed in gentle meanders, now with arrowy swiftness, between banks where the strawberry mixed its crimson with the rich verdure, or beat against the hills that rose boldly in cones upon the border of the interval, and were the abutments of loftier mountains.
Every village of the Cherokees within this beautiful country,
Estatoe, Qualatchee, and Conasatchee, with its stockaded town-house, was first plundered and then destroyed by fire.
47 The
Indians were plainly observed on the tops of the mountains, gazing at the flames.
For years, the half-charred rafters of their houses might be seen on the desolate hill-sides.
‘I could not help pitying them a little,’ writes
Grant;
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‘their villages were agreeably situated; their houses
neatly built; there were every where astonishing magazines of corn, which were all consumed.’
The surprise was in every town almost equal, for the whole was the work of a few hours; the Indians had no time to save even what they valued most; but left for the pillagers money and watches, wampum and skins.
From sixty to eighty Cherokees were killed; forty, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners.
Those who escaped could live only on horseflesh and wild roots,
48 or must fly over the mountains.
Resting at Fort Prince George,
Montgomery sent Tiftoe and the Old Warrior of
Estatoe through the
Upper and
Middle Town, to summon their head men to treat of peace, or all the towns in the
Upper Nation should be reduced to ashes.
49 But the chiefs of the Cherokees gave no heed to the peremptory message; and the
British army prepared to pass the barriers of the
Alleghany.
From the valley of Keowee,
Montgomery, on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1760, began his march, and at night encamped at the old town of
Oconnee.
The next day he passed from the vale of the
Seneca River over the
Oconnee Mountain, and encamped at the
War-Woman's Creek.
On the twenty-sixth, he crossed the
Blue Mountains from the head spring of the
Savannah to the vale of the Little Tennessee, and made his encampment at the deserted town of
Stecoe.
The
Royal Scots and Highlanders trod the rugged defiles, which were as dangerous as men had ever penetrated, with fearless alacrity, and seemed refreshed by coming into the presence of mountains.
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On the morning of the twenty-seventh, the whole
party began their march early having a distance of eighteen miles to travel to the town of Etchowee, the nearest of the middle settlements of the Cherokees.
‘Let
Montgomery be wary,’ wrote
Washington; ‘he has a subtle enemy, that may give him most trouble when he least expects it.’
The army passed down the
valley of the Little Tennessee, along the mountain stream which, taking its rise in
Rabun County in
Georgia, flows through
Macon County in
North Carolina.
Not far from
Franklin, their path lay along the muddy river with its steep clay banks, through a plain covered with the dense thicket, overlooked on one side by a high mountain, and on the other by hilly, uneven ground.
50 At this narrow pass, which was then called
Crow's Creek, the Cherokees emerged from an ambush.
51 Morrison, a gallant officer, was killed at the head of the advanced party.
But the
Highlanders and provincials drove the enemy from their lurking-places; and returning to their yells three huzzas and three waves of their bonnets and hats, they chased them from height and hollow.
At the ford, the army passed the river; and, protected by it on their right, and by a flankingparty on the left, treading a path sometimes so narrow that they were obliged to march in Indian file, fired upon from the rear, and twice from the front, they were not collected at Etchowee till midnight, and after a loss of twenty men, besides seventy-six wounded.
52
For one day, and one day only,
Montgomery
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rested in the heart of
the Alleghanies.
53 If he had
advanced to relieve, the siege of
Fort Loudoun, he must have abandoned his wounded men and his baggage.
On the following night, deceiving the Cherokees by kindling lights at Etchowee, the army retreated, and, marching twenty-five miles, they never halted till they came to War-Woman's Creek in the
valley of the Savannah.
On the thirtieth, they crossed the
Oconnee Mountain; and on the first day of July, reached Fort Prince George.
The retreat of
Montgomery was the knell of the famished
Fort Loudoun.
By the unanimous resolve of the officers,
James Stuart, afterwards Indian agent for the
Southern division, repaired to Chotee, and agreed on terms of capitulation,
54 which neither party observed; and, on the morning of the eighth of August, Oconostata himself received the surrender of the fort, and sent its garrison of two hundred on their way to
Carolina.
The next day, at Telliquo, the fugitives were surrounded;
Demere and three other officers, with twenty-three privates, were killed.
The
Cherokee warriors were very exact in that number, as being the amount of hostages who had been retained by
Lyttleton55 in the previous December.
The rest were brought back and distributed among the tribes.
56 Their English prisoners, including captives carried from the back settlements of
North and
South Carolina, were thought to have amounted to near three hundred souls.
57
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But friendship lives in the heart of the savage.
Listen to the tale of a red man's fidelity.
Attakullakulla, hearing that
Stuart, his friend, was a prisoner, hastened to ransom him, by giving every thing he could command; and when Oconostata, in a great council at Chotee, would have compelled the assistance of the
English agent in the proposed siege of Fort Prince George, the Little Carpenter took him away as if to hunt for venison, and struck through the wilderness for
Virginia.
Nine days and nights they travelled, with such game as they killed for their food, with the light in the sky for their guide, through gaps rarely trodden, even by wild beasts,— for the beasts of the forests pick their paths;—on the tenth day, they met a detachment of
Virginians on
Holston River.
58
The country beyond the mountains was deserted; nor was Carolina safe.
But
Montgomery, by his expedition had only inflamed the war,
59 and, having obeyed the letter of his instructions by reaching the country of the Cherokees,
60 prepared to embark precipitately for the
North.
The province was in the greatest consternation.
On the eleventh of July, the General Assembly represented their inability to ‘prevent the Cherokees from ravaging the back settlements;’ and ‘unanimously entreated’ the
lieutenant governor ‘to use the most pressing instances with
Colonel Montgomery not to depart with the king's troops, as it might be attended with the most pernicious consequences.’
But
Montgomery, though
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warned, that he was but giving the Cherokees occa-
sion to boast throughout the wilderness in their own towns, and among the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and the
Creeks, of their having obliged the
English army to retreat, not from their mountains only but from the province, shunned the path of duty, and leaving four companies of Royal Scots, sailed for
Halifax by way of New York; for, wrote he, ‘I cannot help the people's fears.’
And afterwards, in his place in the House of Commons, he acted as one who thought the
Americans factious in peace and feeble in war.
Ellis, the governor of
Georgia, wiser than
Lyttleton, had been less peremptory with the
Creeks, and had been able to secure their good will.
61 
