South Carolina was in deep humiliation over the retreat of Montgomery to Fort Prince George. From that place (July 19, 1760) it was reported: “This morning about nine o’clock arrived here capt. John Brown, with 13 white men dressed and painted like Indians, and 43 Chickasaws, who came with intent to join Col. Montgomery, not having heard of his return. The declaration of capt. John Brown, who, with capt. Adair, heads the Chickasaws, that are come to join Col. Montgomery, imports that the day before he left the Breed Camp, the Chickasaws advised him, if he wanted to save his life to go immediately and leave his effects to their care ... for there was no trusting the Creeks any longer who had agreed to fall on the English.”[[18]]
Letters from the expeditionary force, yet preserved in the archives at Columbia, show that Captain Adair and his party of Chickasaws were bold and active, doubtless serving as scouts.[[19]] In July following, the sum of two hundred pounds, currency, was included in the appropriation bill as his compensation. Adair, in 1759, was for attacking and vigorously pressing the war, but his advice was not attended to. In the meantime aid had come to the Cherokees from the Creeks under Great Mortar.
Carolina’s prestige was in eclipse, and another campaign was planned for 1761, led by Colonel James Grant, Virginia troops advancing, though leisurely,[[20]] under Colonel Wm. Byrd III, to assist in the subjugation of the Cherokees in the Overhill towns. Adair’s History indicates his connection with Grant’s expedition, but is barren of details and it has proven difficult to trace elsewhere the part he took.
To the far-away Chickasaws, the trader turned to recoup his fortunes after the termination of the Cherokee War and his repulse in the matter of his second memorial. There was real need for Adair’s services on the part of that gallant people. The French were attempting to make a breach between them and the Choctaws. They were “in great want of ammunition” and goods.[[21]] Adair chose Mobile as mart for his peltry, after the surrender of the country by the French under the peace treaty of 1763.
Existing records testify to the fact that Adair aided the authorities in efforts to prevent the Chickasaws being debauched by rum and to hold unprincipled traders in leash. He supported the commissary of the government of West Florida, in February, 1766, in the arrest and prosecution of John Buckles and Alexander McIntosh, in a “Memorandum of some Material Heads,” in which his powers of invective did not fail to outcrop: McIntosh “debauched the Indians with rum to the uneasiness and disgust of orderly traders, the loss of their numerous outstanding debts and every chance of fair trade ... faithful to his black trust, in his Arabian-like method of plundering the Indians.... He would make a new Hell of this place, and it is hoped that he may go thru’ Purgatory properly.”[[22]]
It was during this stay (1761-68) among them that the greater portion of his History of the American Indians was written. He left his oft-tried and true friends, the Chickasaws, in the early part of May, 1768,[[23]] and went to the North—doubtless to interview Sir Wm. Johnson for materials with which to enlarge the scope of his work, his own experience and observations having been confined to the leading tribes of the South.
Of Adair in London in 1775 we have not a glimpse. Did he visit Scotland and Ireland among his kinsmen?
His closing years constitute for the researcher the most baffling period of his career. Dr. James B. Adair in his Adair History and Genealogy (1924) says that he settled and married in North Carolina after his return from London in 1775. The locality and name of the woman he is supposed to have married are not given. On the other hand, Emmett Starr, the Cherokee historian and genealogist, states in a letter to the writer that Adair never married. If an inference may be indulged, it seems that it was in the western part of North Carolina that he settled—the region west of the Alleghanies, now known as Lower East Tennessee, near the Tennessee-Georgia line. There a landing on Conesauga River bore the name “Adair,” a point of transit of shipments by way of the Hiwassee after portage from Hildebrand’s landing on the Hiwassee, in a somewhat later period. Just across the state line in Georgia is the village of Adair.
Another fact adds weight to the inference: the descendants of Adair related their nativity to that region. Without doubt Adair left his blood strain among the Cherokee and Chickasaws. As those of colonial days would express it, he was too “full-habited” to have made himself an exception to the custom of traders resident among the red tribes to form alliance with Indian maidens, with resultant offspring.
Emmett Starr, in his History of the Cherokee Indians, 403, gives: