George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[350] young braves, whose names were already honor-

chap. XV.} 1760.

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.¹

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.’² Yet Fort Loudoun, on the Tennessee, was exposed to the savages, beyond the reach of succor.³ From Louisiana⁴ 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.⁵