* Fort Prince George was a strong work. It was quadrangular, with an earthen rampart six feet high, upon which stockades were placed. Around it was a ditch, and it had a natural glacis on two sides. At each angle was a bastion, on which four small cannons were mounted. It contained barracks for a hundred men.
Montgomery's Expedition against the Indians.—Peace.—Renewal of War.—Grant and Middleton's Expedition.
Indian country. Before proceeding, Montgomery rendezvoused at Monk's Corner,April, 1760 near Charleston, where volunteers flocked to his standard. The Cherokees were advised of these preparations for invading their territory, and were at first uneasy. Their beautiful domain spread out between the Broad and Savannah Rivers, and was fenced in by rugged mountains. They had then sixty-four towns and villages, and upon an emergency could call six thousand warriors to the field. Reflecting upon this force, they felt strong. Montgomery, with only two thousand men, proceeded against the Indians. In several engagements he chastised them severely, and pressed on to the relief of Fort Prince George, then closely invested by the red warriors. The Indians fled at his approach toward the secure fastnesses of the mountains and morasses, and hither Montgomery pursued them. The wilderness was vast and fearful over which he marched, and the streams to be forded were often deep and turbid. The enemy finally made a stand at Etchoee, the nearest town of their middle settlements. Within five miles of this village a severe battle was fought. The Cherokees fell back slowly before the cold bayonet; and when they saw the English pressing toward the town, they fled thither precipitately, to save their women and children. Montgomery, feeling unsafe in that far off and desolate region, returned to Fort Prince George, and from thence toward Charleston. All the way to the populous settlements, he was annoyed by the Indians, who hung upon his rear, and the purpose of the campaign was only half accomplished. Montgomery and his regulars soon afterward returned to New York.
While this retreat was in progress, the distant post of Fort Loudon, on the Tennessee, was invested by the Cherokees. The garrison of two hundred men was daily melting away by famine. The Virginia Rangers attempted its relief, but without success. The garrison finally surrendered. Safe guidance to the frontier settlements, with ammunition and other baggage was promised them; but they had gone only a short distance on their way, when their guides forsook them, and another body of Indians fell upon and massacred twenty-six of them. A few escaped, and Stuart, their commander, and some others, remained captives a long time.
The Cherokees were now willing to treat for peace, but the French had sent emissaries among them, who kept their fears and animosities constantly excited. Soon the war was renewed with all its former violence, while Carolina was left almost wholly to her own resources. She raised a provincial regiment of twelve hundred men, and gave the command to Colonel Middleton, a brave and accomplished officer. Among his subordinates were Henry Laurens, Francis Marion, William Moultrie, Isaac Huger, and Andrew Pickens, all of whom were very distinguished patriots during the Revolution. This was their first military school, and the lessons they were there taught were very useful in a subsequent hour of need. When this little band was ready to march into the Cherokee country, Colonel James Grant, with the regiments formerly commanded by Montgomery, landed at Charleston.April, 1761 The united forces of Grant and Middleton, with some of the Chickasaw and Catawba Indians as allies, in all twenty-six hundred men, reached Fort
Prince George on the twenty-ninth of May. Nine days afterwardJune 7 they advanced toward Etchoee, where, upon the ground where Montgomery fought them, a large body of Cherokees were gathered. Well skilled in the use of fire-arms, and now well supplied by the French, they presented a formidable front. They also had the advantage of superior position, and the battle which ensued was severe and bloody. For three hours the conflict raged in that deep wilderness; and it was not until the deadly bayonet, in the hands of desperate men, was brought to bear upon the Indians, that they gave way. Inch by inch they fell back, until finally, completely overpowered, they fled, hotly pursued by their conquerors. How many were slain is not known; the English lost nearly sixty men. Like Sullivan in the Seneca country, Grant followed up his victory with the torch. Etchoee was laid in ashes; the cornfields and granaries were destroyed, and the wretched people were driven to the barren mountains. * So terrible was the punishment, that the name of Grant was to them a synonym for devastation.
* Marion, in a letter quoted by Weems, mentioned the wanton destruction of the corn, then in full ear, and said, "I saw every where around the footsteps of the little Indian children, where they had lately played under the shelter of the rustling corn. No doubt they had often looked up with joy to the swelling shocks, and gladdened when they thought of their abundant cakes for the coming winter. When we are gone, thought I, they will return, and, peeping through the weeds with tearful eyes, will mark the ghastly ruin poured over their homes, and the happy fields where they had so often played. 'Who did this?' they will ask their mothers. 'The white people; the Christians did it!' will be the reply."
Treaty of Peace and Friendship.—Influence of Royal Emissaries.—Indian Hostilities renewed.—John Stuart.
By this victory, the spirit of the Cherokee Nation was broken, and the French, whose machinations had urged them to continued hostilities, were hated and despised by them. Through the venerable sachem, Attakullakulla, who had remained a friend of the white people, the chiefs of the Nation humbly sued for peace. "The Great Spirit," said the old man, "is the father of the white man and the Indian; as we all live in one land, let us all live as one people." His words of counsel were heeded; a treaty of amity was concluded, and a bloody war was ended. The Treaty of Paris, between the English and French, was concluded in 1763, and, except the feeble Spaniards on the South, the Cherokees had no enemies of the English thereafter to excite them to war.
From 1761, until the war of the Revolution commenced, the Indians upon the Carolina and Georgia frontiers were generally quiet and peaceful. Pursuant to the secret instructions which the royal governors received from the British ministry, to band the Indians against the colonists, Tory emissaries went up from the sea-board and excited the Cherokees and their neighbors to go upon the war-path. Among the most active and influential of these emissaries of the crown was John Stuart, a Scotchman, and at that time his majesty's Indian agent for the Southern colonies. * Stuart arranged a plan with Wright, Campbell, Martin, Dunmore, and other royal governors, to land a British army at St. Augustine, in Florida, which, uniting with the Indians and Tories, might invade the state at an interior point, while a fleet should blockade its harbors, and land an invading army on the sea-board. This plan was discovered by the Carolinians, but not in time entirely to defeat it; for, when Parker and Clinton made their attack upon Charleston,June 28, 1776 the Cherokees commenced a series of massacres upon the western frontiers of the province. Already a few stockade forts had been erected in that section, and to these the terrified borderers fled for safety. Colonel Williamson, of the district of Ninety-Six, who was charged with the defense of the upper country, raised about five hundred true men, and in his first skirmish with the Indians, in which he took some prisoners, discovered thirteen white men, Tories, disguised as savages, and wielding the tomahawk and scalping knife. The indignation excited against these men extended to their class, and this discovery was the beginning of those bloody scenes between bands of Whigs and Tories which characterized many districts of South Carolina. The domestic feuds which ensued were pregnant with horrid results; the ferocity of the tiger usurped the blessed image of God in the hearts of men, and made them brutes, with fearful power to be brutal.