The War in the Northwest 291 



king's forces at Savannah; but when they reached 

 the frontier they scattered out to plunder and rav- 

 age. A body of Americans fell on one of their 

 parties and crushed it; whereupon the rest returned 

 home in a fright, save about seventy, who went 

 on and joined the British. At the same time three 

 hundred Chickamaugas, likewise led by the resi- 

 dent British commissaries, started out against the 

 Carolina frontier. But Robertson, at Chota, re- 

 ceived news of the march, and promptly sent warn- 

 ing to the Holston settlements 21 ; and the Holston 

 men, both of Virginia and North Carolina, decided 

 immediately to send an expedition against the 

 homes of the war party. This would not only 

 at once recall them from the frontier, but would 

 give them a salutary lesson. 



Accordingly the backwoods levies gathered on 

 Clinch River, at the mouth of Big Creek, April 

 loth, and embarked in pirogues and canoes to de- 

 scend the Tennessee. There were several hundred 

 of them 22 under the command of Evan Shelby; 



21 Do. "A rebel commissioner in Chote being informed of 

 their movments here sent express into Holston River." This 

 "rebel commissioner" was in all probability Robertson. 



42 State Department MSS. No. 51, Vol. II, p. 17, a letter 

 from the British agents among the Creeks to Lord George 

 Germaine, of July 12, 1779. It says "near 300 rebels"; Hay- 

 wood, whose accounts are derived from oral tradition, says 

 one thousand. Cameron's letter of July isth in the Haldi- 

 mand MSS. says seven hundred. Some of them were Virgin- 

 ians who had been designed for Clark's assistance in his Illi- 

 nois campaign, but who were not sent him. Shelby made a 

 very clever stroke, but it had no permanent effect, and it is 



