The Story of Old Fort Loudon

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Hamish, after the first sharp pang, was resolved into curiosity; he must needs slip through the fissure and into the cave below. When Odalie ceased her tears to remonstrate, he declared that he could get out of any cave that Willinawaugh or Choo-qualee-qualoo could, and then demanded to be tied to her apron-string to be drawn up again in case he should prove unable to take care of himself. He went down with a whoop, somewhat like Willinawaugh's own war-cry, then called out that the coast was clear, and asked for his rifle to be handed to him.

Following the wall with his hand and the sound of the water he took his way through a narrow subterranean passage, so densely black that it seemed he had never before known what darkness was. He could hear naught but the wide, hollow echo of the flow of the stream, but never did it touch his feet; and after he had progressed, as he judged, including the windings of his way, some five or six miles, he began to recollect a little, meager stream, yet flowing with a good force for its compass, that made a play in the current not a quarter of a mile, not more than one thousand feet, from the fort. So well founded was his judgment of locality that when the light first appeared, a pale glimmer at the end of a long tunnel, growing broader and clearer on approach, and he reached an archway with a sudden turn, seeming from without a mere "rock-house"—as a grotto formed by the beetling ledges of a cliff is called in that region—and with no further cavernous suggestion, the first thing that caught his eye was the English flag flying above the primitive block-houses and bastions and out-works of Fort Loudon, while the little stream gathered all its strength and hied down through the thick underbrush to join the Tennessee River.

The officers heard with evident concern of the disaster that had befallen MacLeod Station, and immediately sent a runner to bid the stationers come to the fort, pending their selection of a new site and the raising of new houses. So Odalie, with such few belongings as could be hastily collected once more loaded on a packhorse, again entered the gates of Fort Loudon with a heavy heart.

But it was a cheery group she encountered. The soldiers were swaggering about the parade in fine form, the picture of military jollity, and the great hall was full of the officers and settlers. An express had come in with news of a different complexion. Long delayed the bearer had been; tempted to turn back here, waiting an opportunity there, now assisted on his backward journey by a friendly Indian, and again seeing a dodging chance of making through to Loudon, he had traveled his two hundred miles so slowly that the expedition he heralded came hard on the announcement of its approach. While the tidings raised the spirits of the officers and the garrison, it was evident that the movement added elements of danger and developed the crisis. Still they consisted with hope, and with that sentiment of good cheer and jovial courage which succeeded the reading of the brief dispatch from Fort Prince George.

Advices just received from Charles Town. General Amherst detaches Colonel Montgomery with adequate force to chastise Indians.

Discussions of the situation were rife everywhere. There was much talk of the officer in command of the expedition, a man of distinguished ability and tried courage, and the contradictory Gilmore and Whitson found themselves in case to argue with great vivacity, offering large wagers of untransferable commodities,—such as one's head, one's eyes, one's life,—on the minor point, impossible to be settled at the moment, as to whether or not he spelled his name with a final "y," one maintaining this to be a fact, the other denying it, since he was a younger brother (afterward succeeding to the title) of the Earl of Eglinton, who always spelled his name Montgomerie. It might have afforded them further subject for discussion, and enlarged their appreciation of the caricature of incongruity, could they have known that some two years later three of these savage Cherokee chiefs would be presented to His Majesty King George in London by the Earl of Eglinton, where they were said to have conducted themselves with great dignity and propriety. Horace Walpole in one of his letters chronicles them as the lions of the hour, dining with peers, and having a vocal celebrity, Mrs. Clive, to sing on one of these occasions in her best style for their pleasure. In fact, such was the grace of their deportment, that several of the newspapers seemed to deduce therefrom the failure of civilization, since the aboriginal state of man could show forth these flowers of decorum, a point of view that offends to the quick a learned historian, who argues astutely throughout a precious half-page of a compendious work that the refinements of spiritual culture are still worth consideration, seeming to imply that although we cannot all be Cherokee chieftains, and take London by storm,—in a manner different, let us say in passing, from their previous reduction of smaller cities,—it is quite advisable for us to mind our curriculum and our catechism, and be as wise and good as we may, if not distinguished.

Perhaps the Cherokees acted upon the intuitive perception of the value of doing in Rome as the Romans do. And that rule of conduct seems earlier to have been applied by Colonel Montgomery. However he spelled his name, he was sufficiently identifiable. He came northward like an avenging fury. Advancing swiftly with a battalion of Highlanders and four companies of the Royal Scots,[11] some militia and volunteers, through that wild and tangled country, he fell on Little Keowee Town, where with a small detachment he put every man to the sword, and, by making a night march with the main body of his force, almost simultaneously destroyed Estatoe, taking the inhabitants so by surprise that the beds were warm, the food was cooking, loaded guns exploded in the flames, for the town was promptly fired, and many perished thus, the soldiers having become almost uncontrollable on discovering the body of an Englishman who had only that morning suffered death by torture at the hands of the savages. Sugaw Town next met this fate—in fact, almost every one of the Ayrate towns of the Cherokee nation, before Colonel Montgomery wiped his bloody sword, and sheathed it at the gates of Fort Prince George, having personally made several narrow escapes.

These details, however, were to Fort Loudon like the flashes of lightning of a storm still below the horizon, and of which one is only made aware by the portentous conditions of the atmosphere. The senior officers of the post began to look grave. The idea occurred to them with such force that they scarcely dared to mention it one to the other, lest it be developed by some obscure electrical transmission in the brain of Oconostota, that Fort Loudon would offer great strategic value in the possession of the Indians. The artillery, managed by French officers, who, doubtless, would appear at their appeal, might well suffice to check the English advance. The fort itself would afford impregnable shelter to the braves, their French allies and non-combatants. Always they had coveted it, always they claimed that it had been built for them, here in the heart of their nation. Stuart was not surprised by the event. He only wondered that it had not chanced earlier.

That night the enmity of the Indians was prefigured by a great glare suddenly springing into the sky. It rose above the forests, and from the open spaces about Fort Loudon, whence the woods had been cleared away, one could see it fluctuate and flush more deeply, and expand along the horizon like some flickering mystery of the aurora borealis. But this baleful glare admitted of no doubt. One needed not to speculate on unexplained possibilities of electrical currents, and resultant thrills of light. It only epitomized and materialized the kindling of the fires of hate.

It was Odalie's little home; much that she valued still remained there—left to be quietly fetched to the fort next day. Their flitting had taken place at dusk, with but a load of wearing apparel, and it was supposed that the rest was quite safe, as the Cherokees were not presumed to be apprised of their absence. The spinning-wheel and the loom; her laborious treasures of home-woven linen for bed and table; the fine curtains on which the birds flickered for the last time; the beds and pillows, adding pounds on pounds of dry balsam needles to the fire; the flaunting, disguised tabourets, showing themselves now at their true value, and burning stolidly like the chunks of wood they were; the unsteady tables and puncheon benches; all the uncouth, forlorn little makeshifts of her humble housekeeping, that her embellishing touch had rendered so pretty, added their fuel to the flames which cast long-glancing lines of light up and down the silvery reaches of the river she had loved.