As Sevier remarked, the Southern, no less than the Northern Indians were much excited and encouraged by the defeat of St. Clair, coming as it did so close upon the defeat of Harmar. The double disaster to the American arms made the young braves very bold, and it became impossible for the elder men to restrain them. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., pp. 263, 439, etc.] The Creeks harassed the frontiers of Georgia somewhat, but devoted their main attention to the Tennesseeans, and especially to the isolated settlements on the Cumberland. The Chickamauga towns were right at the crossing place both for the Northern Indians when they came south and for the Creeks when they went north. Bands of Shawnees, who were at this time the most inveterate of the enemies of the frontiersmen, passed much time among them; and the Creek war parties, when they journeyed north to steal horses and get scalps, invariably stopped among them, and on their return stopped again to exhibit their trophies and hold scalp dances. The natural effect was that the Chickamaugas, who were mainly Lower Town Cherokees, seeing the impunity with which the ravages were committed, and appreciating the fact that under the orders of the Government they could not be molested in their own homes by the whites, began to join in the raids; and their nearness to the settlements soon made them the worst offenders. One of their leading chiefs was John Watts, who was of mixed blood. Among all these Southern Indians, half-breeds were far more numerous than among the Northerners, and when the half-breeds lived with their mothers' people they usually became the deadliest enemies of their fathers' race. Yet, they generally preserved the father's name. In consequence, among the extraordinary Indian titles borne by the chiefs of the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws—the Bloody Fellow, the Middle Striker, the Mad Dog, the Glass, the Breath—there were also many names like John Watts, Alexander Cornell, and James Colbert, which were common among the frontiersmen themselves.
Fruitless Peace Negotiations.
These Chickamaugas, and Lower Cherokees, had solemnly entered into treaties of peace, and Blount had been taken in by their professions of friendship, and for some time was loath to believe that their warriors were among war parties who ravaged the settlements. By the spring of 1792, however, the fact of their hostility could no longer be concealed. Nevertheless, in May of that year the chiefs of the Lower Cherokee Towns, joined with those of the Upper Towns in pressing Governor Blount to come to a council at Coyatee, where he was met by two thousand Cherokees, including all their principal chiefs and warriors. [Footnote: Robertson's MSS., Blount to Robertson, May 20, 1792.] The head men, not only from the Upper Towns, but from Nickajack and Running Water, including John Watts, solemnly assured Blount of their peaceful intentions, and expressed their regret at the outrages which they admitted had been committed by their young men. Blount told them plainly that he had the utmost difficulty in restraining the whites from taking vengeance for the numerous murders committed on the settlers, and warned them that if they wished to avert a war which would fall upon both the innocent and the guilty they must themselves keep the peace. The chiefs answered, with seeming earnestness, that they were most desirous of being at peace, and would certainly restrain their men; and they begged for the treaty goods which Blount had in his possession. So sincere did they seem that he gave them the goods. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, March 24,1792; American State Papers, IV., Blount to Secretary of War, June 2, 1792, with minutes of conference at Coyatee.]
This meeting began on the 17th of May, yet on the 16th, within twelve miles of Knoxville, two boys were killed and scalped while picking strawberries, and on the 13th a girl had been scalped within four miles of Nashville; and on the 17th itself, while Judge Campbell of the Territorial Court was returning from the Cumberland Circuit his party was attacked, and one killed. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, June 2, 1792.]
Chickamaugas Make Open War.
Try to Deceive Blount.
When such outrages were committed at the very time the treaty was being held, it was hopeless to expect peace. In September the Chickamaugas threw off the mask and made open war. When the news was received Blount called out the militia and sent word to Robertson that some friendly Cherokees had given warning that a big war party was about to fall on the settlements round Nashville. [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., Blount to Secretary of War, Sept. 11, 1792.] Finding that the warning had been given, the Chickamauga chiefs sought to lull their foes into security by a rather adroit peace of treachery. Two of their chiefs, The Glass and The Bloody Fellow, wrote to Blount complaining that they had assembled their warriors because they were alarmed over rumors of a desire on the part of the whites to maltreat them; and on the receipt of assurances from Blount that they were mistaken, they announced their pleasure and stated that no hostilities would be undertaken. Blount was much relieved at this, and thought that the danger of an outbreak was past. Accordingly he wrote to Robertson telling him that he could disband his troops, as there was no longer need of them. Robertson, however, knew the Indian character as few men did know it, and, moreover, he had received confidential information about the impending raid from a half-breed and a Frenchman who were among the Indians. He did not disband his troops, and wrote to Blount that The Glass and The Bloody Fellow had undoubtedly written as they did simply to deceive him and to secure their villages from a counter-attack while they were off on their raid against the Cumberland people. Accordingly three hundred militia were put under arms. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 6, 1792; Blount to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 10, 1792; to Robertson, Sept. 12; to The Glass, Sept. 13; to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 13; to Robertson, Sept. 14; Robertson to Blount, Sept. 26, 1792.]
Attack Buchanan's Station.
Failure of the Attack.
It was well that the whites were on their guard. Towards the end of September a big war party, under the command of John Watts and including some two hundred Cherokees, eighty Creeks, and some Shawnees, left the Chickamauga Towns and marched swiftly and silently to the Cumberland district. They attempted to surprise one of the more considerable of the lonely little forted towns. It was known as Buchanan's Station, and in it there were several families, including fifteen "gun-men." Two spies went out from it to scour the country and give warning of any Indian advance; but with the Cherokees were two very white half-breeds, whose Indian blood was scarcely noticeable, and these two men met the spies and decoyed them to their death. The Indians then, soon after midnight on the 30th of September, sought to rush the station by surprise. The alarm was given by the running of the frightened cattle, and when the sentinel fired at the assailants they were not ten yards from the gate of the blockhouse. The barred door withstood the shock and the flame-flashes lit up the night as the gun-men fired through the loop-holes. The Indians tried to burn the fort, one of the chiefs, a half-breed, leaping on the roof; he was shot through the thigh and rolled off; but he stayed close to the logs trying to light them with his torch, alternately blowing it into a blaze and halloing to the Indians to keep on with the attack. However, he was slain, as was the Shawnee head chief, and several warriors, while John Watts, leader of the expedition, was shot through both thighs. The log walls of the grim little blockhouse stood out black in the fitful glare of the cane torches; and tongues of red fire streamed into the night as the rifles rang. The attack had failed, and the throng of dark, flitting forms faded into the gloom as the baffled Indians retreated. So disheartened were they by the check, and by the loss they had suffered, that they did not further molest the settlements, but fell back to their strongholds across the Tennessee. Among the Cherokee chiefs who led the raid were two signers of the treaty of Holston. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Oct. 17, 1792; Knoxville Gazette, Oct. 10, and Oct. 20, 1792; Brown's Narrative, in Southwestern Monthly.]
Monotony of the Indian Outrages.
After this the war was open, so far as the Indians of the Lower Cherokee Towns and of many of the Creek Towns were concerned; but the whites were still restrained by strict orders from the United States authorities, who refused to allow them to retaliate. Outrage followed outrage in monotonously bloody succession. The Creeks were the worst offenders in point of numbers, but the Lower Cherokees from the Chickamauga towns did most harm according to their power. Sometimes the bands that entered the settlements were several hundred strong; but their chief object was plunder, and they rarely attacked the strong places of the white frontiersmen, though they forced them to keep huddled in the stockaded stations; nor did they often fight a pitched battle with the larger bodies of militia. There is no reason for reciting in full the countless deeds of rapine and murder. The incidents, though with infinite variety of detail, were in substance the same as in all the Indian wars of the backwoods. Men, women, and children were killed or captured; outlying cabins were attacked and burned; the husbandman was shot as he worked in the field, and the housewife as she went for water. The victim was now a militiaman on his way to join his company, now one of a party of immigrants, now a settler on his lonely farm, and now a justice of the peace going to Court, or a Baptist preacher striving to reach the Cumberland country that he might preach the word of God to the people who had among them no religious instructor. The express messengers and post riders, who went through the wilderness from one commander to the other, always rode at hazard of their lives. In one of Blount's letters to Robertson he remarks: "Your letter of the 6th of February sent express by James Russell was handed to me, much stained with his blood, by Mr. Shannon, who accompanied him." Russell had been wounded in an ambuscade, and his fifty dollars were dearly earned. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, March 8, 1794. The files of the Knoxville Gazette are full of details of these outrages, and so are the letters of Blount to the Secretary of War given in the American State Papers, as well as the letters of Blount and Robertson in the two bound volumes of Robertson MSS. Many of them are quoted in more accessible form in Haywood.]