In January, 1777, Col. Nathaniel Gist was authorized by Congress to raise four companies of rangers, and was instructed to proceed to the Cherokee or any other nation of Indians, and to attempt to procure a number of warriors not exceeding five hundred, who were to be equipped by Congress and receive soldiers' pay.[1419]
We have seen that in 1777 treaties were made with the Cherokees. The Indians at the Chickamauga settlements, which were clustered along the Tennessee, below the site of Chattanooga, and near where the river crosses the state line, had not participated in the treaties. In the interval between the joint campaign in the fall of 1776 and the spring of 1779 outrages had been committed by these Indians, and it was determined to punish them. A thousand volunteers from the back settlements of North Carolina and Virginia assembled on the banks of the Holston, in the northeastern part of Tennessee, a few miles above where Rogersville stands. Of these Col. Evan Shelby had command. They were joined by a regiment of twelve-months men which belonged to Colonel Clarke's Illinois expedition. On the 10th of April, 1779, this force embarked in dug-outs and canoes, descended the rapid running stream, surprised the Indians, killed a number of them, burned eleven of their towns, destroyed their provisions, and drove off or killed their cattle. All this having been accomplished without a battle, the troops returned.
In 1780 the contribution of men by the border settlements of North Carolina to the force which fought the battle of King's Mountain left those settlements exposed to Indian raids. As soon after the battle as possible some of the men were sent to Watauga. They learned upon arrival that news had been received of an Indian advance. Col. John Sevier organized an expedition against the Indians, and marched to meet them. The number of volunteers thus hastily gathered together reached about one hundred and seventy. At the end of the second day's march the Indians were discovered. They retreated, and the next day Sevier followed them. The customary ambuscade was prepared by the Indians, but the American leader was too wary to be deceived. On the contrary, he adopted their own tactics, and defeated them in a brief engagement at Boyd's Creek, in which twenty-eight Indians were killed. A few days after this Colonel Sevier was joined by Col. Arthur Campbell, with troops from Virginia. The united forces amounted to seven hundred men. They penetrated the country to the southward, burning a number of Indian towns, and held a council with a large body of Cherokees. After completing the expedition, a message was sent, on January 4, 1781, to the chiefs and warriors of the Indians. It was signed by Col. Arthur Campbell, Lieut.-Col. John Sevier, and Joseph Martin, agent and major of militia, and consisted of a summons to the Indians to send deputies to negotiate a treaty of peace at the Great Island within two moons.[1420]
Towards the end of August, 1780, Colonel Williamson and Colonel Pickens, of South Carolina, raided the Indian territory and destroyed a large amount of stores. To prevent further depredations, the Indians were compelled to remove their habitations to the settled towns of the Creeks.
During the summer of 1781 the Cherokees invaded the settlements on Indian Creek. Colonel Sevier called for volunteers, and attacked them. He killed seventeen Indians and put the rest to flight.
Early in 1781 General Greene made a treaty with the Cherokees, by which they engaged to observe neutrality. This treaty having been violated by the Indians during the summer, Gen. Andrew Pickens, at the head of a mounted force of three hundred and ninety-four men, penetrated to the Cherokee country, burned thirteen towns, killed upwards of forty Indians, and took a number of prisoners. McCall (Georgia, ii. 414) thus summarizes Pickens's method of campaigning: "The general's whole command could not produce a tent or any other description of camp equipage. After the small portion of bread which they could carry in their saddle-bags was exhausted, they lived upon parched corn, potatoes, peas, and beef without salt, which they collected in the Indian towns." Soon after this expedition some of the Creeks and Cherokees again invaded Georgia. They were met beyond Oconee River by Colonel Clarke and by Col. Robert Anderson, of Pickens's brigade, and were driven back. Major John Habersham was sent out by Wayne on an expedition, and his report, Feb. 8, 1782, is in Hist. Mag., iv. 129. In February, 1782, Governor Martin addressed a letter to Colonel Martin and Colonel Sevier, instructing them to drive intruders off the Cherokee lands.
During the summer of 1782 a body of Indians crossed the State of Georgia without being discovered, and on the morning of the 24th of June surprised General Wayne's command. After the first flush of success attendant upon the surprise had been overcome by the Americans, they repulsed the Indians, with the loss of fourteen killed, among whom was one of their chiefs. The kind treatment of some prisoners who were taken aided in detaching the Indians from the British side.
In September, 1782, the upper-town Cherokees, in a talk, complained piteously of the intruders upon their lands, and said they had done nothing to break the last treaty. At the same time, other Indians of the same tribes began depredations. Colonel Sevier, with one hundred volunteers, marched into the Indian country, held a conference with the friendly Indians, and punished those who were hostile by burning their villages.
The Southern campaigns against the Indians have not been treated as fully in local and general histories as those against the Northern tribes. The policy of the several leaders in these campaigns was not entitled, perhaps, to the same recognition as has been awarded to that which governed the Sullivan campaign. The several columns from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia each burned Indian towns and devastated Indian crops, but the plan was not directed by the general in command of the national armies. There have been but few local historians in the South who have searched for diaries, journals, and letters containing details of such affairs. At the time when the centennial anniversaries of these events might fitly have been celebrated by the publication of such original material as could be found, there was not the same disposition in the South to be grateful for the results of the Revolutionary War as then prevailed in the North. Further than that, the materials from which such contributions to history are generally made had been scattered and destroyed during the civil war. For these reasons, the number of books which treat of the border wars in the South is small.
The most complete accounts of the attacks upon the Cherokee settlements which have been published are to be found in the histories of Tennessee. John Haywood's Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its earliest Settlement up to the year 1796, etc. (Knoxville, 1823), is an extensive collection of facts concerning the various raids of the Indians and the counter attacks upon their scattered settlements, which has been freely used by subsequent writers. J. G. M. Ramsey, in his Annals of Tennessee to the end of the eighteenth Century: Comprising its settlement as the Watauga Association from 1769 to 1777; A part of North Carolina from 1777 to 1784 (Charlestown, 1853), relies to a great extent upon Haywood, and acknowledges his obligation by frequent references in his footnotes. In the preparation of this work, Mr. Ramsey says that he had access to the journals and papers of his father, a pioneer of the country, and also to the papers of Sevier, of Shelby, the Blounts, and other public men. He examined the papers of all the old Franklin Counties and the public archives at Milledgeville, Raleigh, Richmond, and Nashville.