Prince George, they were crowded into a hut hardly large enough for six of them. To Attakulla-kulla, the Little Carpenter, an old man, who in 1730 had been in England, but now had little influence with the tribe, Lyttelton, 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. 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." "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." 66 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 procured 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-and-twenty 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. Lyttelton, in fact, had 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 young braves, whose names were already honored 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, in their anger, butchered every one of their unfortunate prisoners. 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 war-song; and the braves dashed upon the frontiers for scalps, even to the skirts of NinetySix. In their attack on that fort, several of them fell. “We fatten our dogs with their carcasses," wrote Francis to Lyttelton;" and display their scalps, neatly ornamented, on the tops of our bastions." Yet Fort Loudoun, on the Tennessee, was exposed to the savages, beyond the reach of succor. From Louisiana 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. Carolina was now in conflict with the mountaineers. Yet, at the meeting of the legislature in February, 1760. 1760, the delegates, still more alarmed at the unwarrantable interference of Lyttelton 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 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 of the board of trade to consult him on questions of colonial administration. 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. 1760. 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 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 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; on the sides of the adjacent hills stood their habitations, and the rich level ground beneath bore their fields of maize, all clambered over by the prolific bean. The mountainsides 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 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. The Indians were plainly observed on the tops of the mountains, gazing at the flames. For years, the half-charred rafters of their dwellings might be seen on the desolate hillsides. "I could not help pitying them a little," writes Grant; "their villages were agreeably situated; their houses neatly built; there were everywhere 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 horse-flesh and wild roots, 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. But the chiefs of the Cherokees gave no heed to the message; and the British army prepared to pass the barriers of the Alleghany. 1760. 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 Oconee. The next day, he passed from the vale of the Seneca River over the Oconee Mountain, and encamped at the War-Woman's Creek. On the twenty-sixth, he crossed the Blue Ridge at the Rabun Gap, and made his encampment at the deserted town of Stecoe. The royal Scots and Highlanders trod the rugged and dangerous defiles with fearless alacrity, and seemed refreshed by coming into the presence of mountains. 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. At this narrow pass, which was then called Crow's Creek, the Cherokees emerged from an ambush. 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 flanking-party 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. 1760. For one day, and one day only, Montgomery rested in the heart of the Alleghanies. 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, an upland tributary of the Savannah. On the thirtieth, they crossed the Oconee Mountain, and on the first day of July reached Fort Prince George. The retreat of Montgomery was the abandonment 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, 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; Demeré 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 Lyttelton in the previous December. The rest were brought back |