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

[355] rested in the heart of the Alleghanies.¹ If he had

chap. XV.} 1760.

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,² 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 Lyttleton³ in the previous December. The rest were brought back and distributed among the tribes.⁴ 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.⁵