The War in the Northwest 315 



hills, gazed with delight on the soft and fertile 

 beauty of the landscape. That night they camped 

 on the North Fork of the Catawba, and next day 

 they went down the river to Quaker Meadows, Mc- 

 Dowell's home. 



At this point they were joined by three hundred 

 and fifty North Carolina militia from the counties 

 of Wilkes and Surrey, who were creeping along 

 through the woods hoping to fall in with some party 

 going to harass the enemy. 24 They were under 

 Col. Benjamin Cleavland, a mighty hunter and 

 Indian fighter, and an adventurous wanderer in the 

 wilderness. He was an uneducated backwoodsman, 

 famous for his great size, and his skill with the 

 rifle, no less than for the curious mixture of courage, 

 rough good-humor, and brutality in his character. 

 He bore a ferocious hatred to the royalists, and 

 in the course of the vindictive civil war carried on 

 between the whigs and tories in North Carolina he 

 suffered much. In return he persecuted his public 

 and private foes with ruthless ferocity, hanging 

 and mutilating any tories against whom the neigh- 

 boring whigs chose to bear evidence. As the for- 

 tunes of the war veered about he himself received 

 many injuries. His goods were destroyed, and his 



24 Shelby MS. Autobiography. See also Gates MSS. Let- 

 ter of Wm. Davidson, Sept. 14, 1780. Davidson had foreseen 

 that there would be a fight between the Western militia and 

 Ferguson, and he had sent word to his militia subordinates to 

 join any force as McDowell's that might go against the 

 British leader. The alarm caused by the latter had prevented 

 the militia from joining Davidson himself. 



