William Gilmore Simms - The Life of Francis Marion

But the natural sense of the savage is not inferior to that by which the laws of the civilized are prescribed, in their dealings with one another. The treaty thus extorted from their leaders, while in a state of duress, was disregarded by the great body of the nation. They watched their opportunity, and, scarcely had the Governor disbanded his forces, when the war-whoop resounded from the frontiers.

Fort Prince George was one of the most remote of a chain of military posts by which the intercourse was maintained between the several white settlements of the seaboard and the interior. It stood on the banks of the Isundiga River, about three hundred miles from Charleston, within gunshot of the Indian town of Keowee. This post, to which the Cherokee hostages were carried, was defended by cannon, and maintained by a small force under Colonel Cotymore. It was in this neighborhood, and, as it were in defiance of this force, that the war was begun. Fourteen whites were massacred at a blow, within a mile of this station. This was followed up by a stratagem, by which Occonostota, one of the principal warriors, aimed to obtain possession of the fort. Pretending to have something of importance to communicate to the commander, he dispatched a woman who had usually obtained access to the station, to solicit an interview with him. This was to take place on the banks of the river. Meanwhile the savage prepared his ambush. Cotymore imprudently assented to the meeting, and, attended by Lieutenants Bell and Foster, walked down towards the river, from the opposite side of which Occonostota addressed him. While they spoke, the Indian was seen to wave a bridle over his head. This was the signal agreed upon with the ambushed warriors. At this signal they rose and poured in their fire. Cotymore was slain on the spot, and his companions wounded. But the savages failed to get possession of the fort. Suspecting a concerted movement among the hostages, by which they would cooperate with the assailing foe without, the officer in command of the fort gave orders to secure them with irons. The attempt to obey these orders ended in a bloody tragedy. The Indians resisted with arms, and, stabbing three of the soldiers, so exasperated the rest, already excited by the murder of their captain, that they fell upon the miserable wretches and butchered them to a man.

This unhappy event, completing what the indiscreet severities of Governor Lyttleton had begun, united the whole nation of Cherokees in war. There had been a strong party favorable to peace, and friendly to the whites. This unfortunate proceeding involved the loss of this party. The hostages were among their chief men, and scarcely a family in the nation but lost a relative or friend in their massacre. They were now unanimous for battle; and, numerous parties rushing simultaneously down upon the frontiers, baffled the courage and prevented the flight of the fugitives. They fell without distinction upon men, women and children. "Such as fled to the woods and escaped the scalping-knife, perished of hunger.... Every day brought fresh accounts to the capital of their ravages, murders and desolations. But while the back settlers looked to their governor for relief, the small-pox raged to such a degree in town that few of the militia could be prevailed upon to leave their distressed families to serve the public."* Lyttleton, meanwhile, by whom all the mischief was occasioned, was made Governor of Jamaica, and the charge of the colony devolved on William Bull, a native—"a man of great integrity and erudition." In the almost hopeless condition of the province, her sisters, North Carolina and Virginia, raised seven troops of rangers for the frontiers; and Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Earl of Eglintoun, was dispatched from Canada, with a battalion of Highlanders and four companies of Royal Scots. Before the end of April, 1760, the camp of rendezvous for a new invasion of the Cherokee territories was established at Monk's Corner. Meanwhile, the health of Carolina had undergone some improvement, and the gentlemen of the country were not idle. They turned out in force as volunteers, and under the spirited direction of Governor Bull, the whole disposable force of the province was put in requisition. Among these, it is not so sure, but is believed, that Francis Marion once more made his appearance as a volunteer. From what we know of his character, his temperament, and that unsatisfied craving which he seems to have shown from the beginning for such excitements, it is reasonable to infer his presence in the field. But, though asserted by tradition, we confess that the records are silent on the subject. Unsatisfactory as at that period they generally are, on this point they are particularly so; and but that his share in this war, before its final conclusion, was not only unquestionable but conspicuous, we should pass over the campaign of Montgomery, with a simple reference to its results.

The Cherokees, meanwhile, were not unobservant of the preparations and approaches of the Carolinians. They gathered themselves up for defence, and in silence matured their half civilized, half primitive modes of warfare. This people, at the period of which we write, were a people of very superior endowments and resources to any of the neighboring savage nations. If less warlike, in the simple sense of the word, than their rivals the Creeks, they were really more to be feared, as it was in consequence of their superior civilisation that they had lost some of their brute ferocity. If they were less reckless, they were better skilled; if less frantic in their fury, they coupled it with a wary vindictiveness which rendered the blow more fatal when it fell. The advances which they had made in civilisation had naturally increased their numbers; while the novel tastes by which their wandering habits were diminished, had necessarily added to their love of country, in adding to the resources and improvements by which its comforts and delights were increased. Thus, neither degraded by the lowest condition in which we find the human animal, nor enervated by the superior luxuries to which he may attain, the Cherokee was perhaps at this time in possession of his greatest vigor; not very remote, in his moral and physical condition, from the Roman when he overcame his Etrurian and Sabine neighbors. The Cherokees occupied a country equally broad and beautiful. It lay in fertile valleys, green meadows, sunny slopes, and mighty forests, along the sides of lofty summits, that circled their extensive territory with natural fortresses of giant grandeur. Spreading from the Broad, or Cherokee river, beyond the Tennessee and the Savannah, it comprised every variety of soil and surface, and while adapted in a high degree to the hands of the agriculturist, seemed almost as easily made secure against the footsteps of invasion. Its apparent securities had made them insolent. Their mountain recesses had never known the presence of this foe. Their fruits and fields, their villages and towns, with the exception of a district that lay upon the Atlantic slopes, were generally fenced in, and admirably protected, by wild and rugged masses of rocky mountains, natural defences, impenetrable, unless through certain passes which a few determined hearts might easily make good against twenty times their number. But the numerical force of this great aboriginal people, seemed of itself sufficiently strong to promise security to their country. At the time of Montgomery's invasion they had no less than sixty-four towns and villages. In an emergency, they could send six thousand warriors into the field. Many of these were armed with the weapons of European warfare—were accustomed to that warfare, and were thus doubly prepared to encounter the enemy in whose ranks they had received their best military lessons. Such a force very far exceeded that of the Carolinians. Mustering but two thousand men, Col. Montgomery found it advisable to urge his march upon the nation with equal celerity and caution. Having reached a place called Twelve-mile River, within twenty miles of the Indian town of Estatoee, he advanced by night upon it, secretly, and with a view to its surprise. In his march, surrounding the town of Little Keowee, not a warrior of the Cherokees escaped the sword. His success was less complete at Estatoee. The Indians, apprised of his approach, with few exceptions, succeeded in making their escape; but the town, consisting of more than two hundred houses, and well stored with corn, hogs, poultry and ammunition, perished in the flames. Shugaw Town and every other settlement in the "Lower Nation", shared the same fate. The lightning-like rapidity of the march had taken the savages everywhere, in this part of the country, by surprise. They fled rather than fought, and while they lost everything in the shape of property, but few of them were slain. They sought for shelter among their more numerous and better protected brethren of the mountains; a people neither so easily approached, nor so easily overcome.