Embassy to the Indians.

Erection of Forts.

War with the Cherokees.

Small-pox at Charleston.

royal province, the first care of the administration was to secure the friendship of the neighboring tribes. In 1730, an embassy under Sir Alexander Cumming, visited and explored the Cherokee country, three hundred miles from Charleston. They made a favorable impression, secured advantageous treaties, and laid, as they hoped, the foundation of a permanent peace. For twenty years the treaty remained unbroken. In 1755, the Cherokees renewed their treaty with the Carolinians, and at the same time made cessions to them of large tracts of land. Upon this ceded territory, stretching along the Savannah to the Tennessee River, Glenn, then governor of South Carolina, built forts, and named them respectively Prince George,' Moore, and Loudon. The first was upon the Savannah, three hundred miles from Charleston; the second was about one hundred and seventy miles below; and the latter was upon the waters of the Tennessee River, five hundred miles from Charleston. These forts were garrisoned by troops from Great Britain, and, promising security, settlements rapidly extended in that direction. They served to awe the Indian nations, and peace might have been always secured, had the white people exercised ordinary prudence. But one rash act scattered the power of treaties to the wind, and lighted the flames of war along the Carolina frontier.

In 1757, during the administration of Governor Lyttleton (afterward Lord Wescott), while a large party of the Cherokees, who had been assisting the English against the French on the Ohio, were returning home, they took possession of some horses from the back settlers of Virginia. The white people pursued them, killed a number of warriors, and took several captive. This violence exasperated the Indians, and they retaliated by scalping every white man whom they met. Parties of young warriors fell upon the border settlements of the Carolinas, and war was kindled along the whole frontier. Lyttleton called the Carolinians to arms. The Cherokee chiefs were alarmed, and sent a deputation to Charleston to appease the wrath of the English. Lasting friendship might have been at once secured had not Lyttleton indiscreetly refused to listen. He collected fourteen hundred men upon the Congaree, conducted the Cherokee delegation thither, under guard, and, extorting a pledge of peace and alliance, he returned to Charleston, after sending to Fort George twenty-two hostages, whom he had demanded for the delivery of the warriors who had desolated the border settlements. The Cherokees were very indignant, and the governor had scarcely reached his capital, when he received intelligence that fourteen white people had been murdered within a mile of Fort George. Soon the Cherokees surrounded that fortress, led on by Occonastota, a chief of great influence, and the implacable enemy of the English. Perceiving the power of his arms to be vain, he had recourse to stratagem. Withdrawing his warriors, he spread them in ambush, and while conferring with the commander of the garrison and two other officers, whom he had decoyed to the margin of a stream by expressions of friendship, he gave a signal, and instantly they were surrounded by armed savages. The commander was slain, and the other two were wounded and made prisoners. The garrison proceeded to put the hostages in irons. They made a deadly resistance, and were all slain. This event maddened the whole Indian nation, and, with gleaming hatchets, they swept along the Carolina frontier like the scythe of Death. Men, women, and children were butchered without mercy; and the war-belt was sent to the Catawbas and other tribes, inviting them to confederate for the extermination of the English.

About this time, Charleston was severely scourged by the small-pox, and was too weak to send efficient succor to the frontiers. Lyttleton had been appointed governor of Jamaica, and, sailing for that island about this time, was succeeded by William Bull, a native Carolinian. Bull sent to Virginia and North Carolina for aid, and those states furnished seven troops of rangers for the service. These, with the British regulars under Colonel Montgomery (afterward Earl of Eglinton), sent from Canada by General Amherst, marched into the

1 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 hund red men.

Montgomery's Expedition against the Indians.

a April, 1760.

Indian country. Before proceeding, Montgomery rendezvoused at Monk's Corner, a 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 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.

of their middle settlements.

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.

b April, 1761.

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.b 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 c June 7. Prince George on the twenty-ninth of May. Nine days afterwards 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.1 So terrible was the punishment, that the name of Grant was to them a synonym for devastation.

1 Marion, in a letter quoted by Weems, mentioned the wanton destruction of the corn, then in full ear,

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.1 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, a the Cherokees commenced a series of massacres upon the western frontiers of the province. Already a few 1776. 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.

a June 28,

When intelligence of the affair at Charleston reached the interior, the patriots were encouraged, and Williamson soon found himself at the head of a force of twelve hundred men, and daily augmenting. With a detachment of three hundred horsemen, he proceeded to attack an Indian and Tory force at Oconoree Creek. He fell into an ambuscade, and himself and companions narrowly escaped destruction. His horse was shot under him; his squad

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."

1 John Stuart came to America with Oglethorpe, probably with the Highlanders under M'Intosh, the father of General Lachlin M'Intosh, of the Revolution, who settled upon the Alatamahaw, and called the place New Inverness. The Indians were greatly pleased with the dress and character of the Highlanders, and to this circumstance is attributed Stuart's influence among them. Stuart went to Charleston; became Indian agent; married Miss Fenwick, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the province, and finally became one of the king's council. He lived in the house on the corner of Wadd and Orange Streets, Charleston, now (1851) owned by William Carson, Esq. He had commanded a corps on Cumberland Island, who gallantly repulsed the Spaniards in 1745, and this was the commencement of his popularity which led up to the civil station that he held in council. He chose the royal side when the Revolution broke out, and to him was attributed all of the difficulties with the Indians upon the frontier during the first year of that struggle. Alarmed for his personal safety, he fled to St. Augustine. His estate was confiscated. He died in England. His son, Sir John Stuart, became a distinguished general in the British army.-Sec Johnson's Traditions of the Revolution, page 107.

Desolation of the Cherokee Country.

Expeditions under Rutherford and Pickens. Present Condition of the Cherokees

ron were thrown into disorder; and but for the skill and coolness of Colonel Hammond in rallying them, they would have been routed, and many slain. They were victorious, and shortly after this event, Williamson marched, with two thousand men, to lay waste the Cherokee country. Again he fell into an ambuscade, in a narrow defile among the rugged mountains, near the present town of Franklin. From the rocky heights, and from behind the huge trees of the forest, twelve hundred warriors, with some Tories, poured a destructive fire upon the Whigs. But again the Indians were repulsed, and Williamson pressed forward cautiously but efficiently in the work of conquest and desolation. The valleys were smiling with crops of corn, and numerous villages dotted the water-courses. Towns were laid in ashes; the standing corn was trampled down and destroyed; and over all the Indian settlements eastward of the Apalachian Mountains, the broom of desolation swept with terrible effect. The destruction of food invited famine to a revel, and, to avoid starvation, five hundred warriors crossed the Savannah and fled to the Loyalists in Florida.

In the mean while, General Rutherford, of North Carolina, with a force fully equal to Williamson's, crossed the Blue Ridge at Swannanoa Gap, and proceeded to the valley of the Tennessee River, laying waste the Indian country on the line of his march. There he joined Williamson on the fourteenth of September. The work of destruction being completed, Rutherford returned to Salisbury in October, where he disbanded his troops. The conquest was consummate. The Cherokees sued for peace, but they had no Attakullakulla to intercede for them, for he had gone down into silence. They were compelled to submit to the most abject humiliation, and to cede to South Carolina all their lands beyond the mountains of Unacaya, now comprised within the fertile districts of Greenville, Anderson, and Pickens, watered by the tributaries of the Savannah, the Saluda, and the Ennoree.'

Only once again did the Cherokees lift the hatchet, during the war. In 1781, British emissaries induced them to go upon the war-path. With a large number of disguised white men, they fell upon the inhabitants in Ninety-Six, massacred some families, and burned their houses. General Pickens, with a party of militia, penetrated the Cherokee country, and in the space of fourteen days he burned thirteen of their villages, killed more than forty of the Indians, and took nearly seventy of them prisoners. They sued for peace, promised never to listen to the British again, and from that time they remained quiet.'

The spirit of the North Carolina Regulators was infused into the back settlers of South Carolina, beyond the Broad River, and about 1769, the leading men of that region took the law into their own hands. To suppress their rising power and importance, the governor employed a man of low habits, but of haughty demeanor, named Scovill, to go thither and enforce the laws of the province. He gave him the commission of colonel, and, with the mistaken policy of a narrow mind, he used rigorous measures, instead of evincing forbearance and a spirit of conciliation. The sufferings which they endured made them reprobate all government, and when asked to espouse the cause of Congress, they refused, on the ground that all congresses or instruments of government are arbitrary and tyrannical. These formed the basis of the Tory ascendency in that section of the state at the beginning of the war; and before the names of Whig and Tory became distinctive appellations, the name of Scovillites was applied to those who opposed the Republicans. There were also many Dutch settlers between the Broad and Saluda Rivers, who had received bounty lands from the king. Moultrie, Ramsay, Simms, Johnson.

A greater portion of the Cherokee Nation, now in existence, occupy territory west of the Mississippi. A remnant of them remain in North Carolina, at a place called Qualla Town, in Haywood county. They were allowed to remain when the general emigration of their nation took place. They have a tract of seventy-two thousand acres of land. Almost every adult can read in the Cherokee language, and most of them understand English. They manufacture all their necessaries; have courts, lawyers, and judges of their own, and have all the political rights of free citizens of the state. They are sober, industrious, and religious. Their present business chief (1851) is William H. Thomas, Esq., senator from that district (50th). The Qualla Town Cherokees exhibit some remarkable cases of longevity. In 1850, Messrs. Mitchell and Smoot, while on an official visit there, saw Kalosteh, who was then one hundred and twenty years old. His wife "went out like a candle," as Kalosteh said, the year before, at the age of one hundred and twentyfive years. It is said that people one hundred years old are not uncommon there.

The Western Settlers.

Growth of Party Spirit.

The Cunninghams.

Seizure of Powder.

Government emissaries persuaded these settlers to believe that an espousal of the rebel cause would be the sure precursor of the loss of their lands. These augmented the loyal population when the inhabitants were called upon to make a political decision. Still another class, the Scotch-Irish Protestants, had experienced the bounty of the king, and these, with a feeling of gratitude, adhered to the royal government. Over all these, Lord William Campbell, the royal governor when the war broke out, had unbounded influence, and probably in not one of the thirteen colonies was loyalty more rampant and uncompromising than in South Carolina. Many, whose feelings were all in harmony with the opposers of royal rule, were urged by self-interest to remain quiet; for they felt secure in person and property under present circumstances, and feared the result of commotion. Thus active and passive loyalty sat like an incubus upon the real patriotism of South Carolina; and yet, in every portion of the state, the Tories were outnumbered by the Whigs, except in the section we are now considering, between the Broad and Saluda Rivers. The inhabitants there could not be persuaded to furnish men and arms for the army of Congress, nor to sign the American Association.

Early in 1776, William Henry Drayton,' Colonel William Thomson, Colonel Joseph Kershaw, and Reverend William Tennent, were sent by the Council of Safety at Charleston into that district, to explain to the people the nature of the dispute. Emissaries of government counteracted their influence by persuading the people that the inhabitants of the seaboard desired to get their tea free of duty, while those in the interior would be obliged to pay a high rate for salt, osnaburgs, and other imported necessaries. The baneful seeds of suspicion and mutual distrust were sown broad-cast among the settlers. The men of each party banded together in fear of the violence of the other, and soon opposing camps were formed. Moderate men endeavored to prevent bloodshed, and a conference of their respective leaders was finally effected. A treaty of mutual forbearance was agreed to, and for a while agitation almost ceased. But restless spirits were busy. Among these, Robert and Patrick Cunningham,' Tory leaders, were the most active, and they soon disturbed the repose of party suspicion and animosity. By their machinations, it was aroused to wakefulThe Whigs, fearful of Robert Cunningham's influence, seized and conveyed him to Charleston, where he was imprisoned. His brother Patrick raised a force to attempt a

ness.

rescue.

At about this time, a thousand pounds of powder, on its way as a present to the Cherokees, was seized by these Loyalists. This excited the already vigorous efforts of the Council of Safety to more efficient measures. Colonel Williamson (the same officer who chastised the Cherokees), with a party of patriots, was sent to regain the powder. They seized Patrick Cunningham, the leader, when the Tories gathered in strength, and drove Williamson into a stockade fort at Ninety-Six. After remaining there some days, an agreement for a cessation of hostilities was concluded, and both parties dispersed to their homes.

Mr. Drayton was, at this time, quite a young man, a descendant of one of the leading families of South Carolina. He was a nephew of Governor Bull. When Republican principles began to work up to the surface, and become visible at the South, in 1771, his pen was employed on the side of government, in opposition to Christopher Gadsden and others. These essays brought him into notice. He was introduced at court, and was appointed one of Governor Bull's council. As the Revolution advanced to a crisis, Drayton saw the injustice of Great Britain, and espoused the Republican cause. He became a favorite of the people, and, while a delegate in the Continental Congress, he died in their service in 1779.

2 Robert Cunningham was an Irish settler in the District of Ninety-Six, now Abbeville, where he was commissioned a judge in 1770. After his release, in 1776, he removed to Charleston. In 1780, he was appointed a brigadier general to command the Loyalists of that province. His estate was confiscated in 1782, and not being allowed to remain in the province at the close of the war, he went to Nassau, New Providence, where he died in 1813, at the age of seventy-four years. The British government indemnified him for his losses, and gave him a pension. His brother Patrick was deputy surveyor of the colony in 1769. He received the commission of colonel, under Robert, in 1780. His property, also, was confiscated in 1782, and at the close of the war he went to Florida. The South Carolina Legislature afterward treated him leniently, and restored a part of his property. He was elected a member of the Legislature by his Tory friends. He died in 1794.