The War in the Northwest 365 



laid waste, a thousand cabins were burned, and fifty 

 thousand bushels of corn destroyed. Twenty-nine 

 warriors in all were killed, and seventeen women and 

 children captured, not including the family of Nancy 

 Ward, who were treated as friends, not prisoners. 

 But one white man was killed and two wounded. 5 



5 Campbell MSS. Arthur Campbell's official report. The 

 figures of the cabins and corn destroyed are probably exag- 

 gerated. All the Tennessee historians, down to Phelan, are 

 hopelessly in the dark over this campaign. Haywood actu- 

 ally duplicates it (pp. 63 and 99) recounting it first as occur- 

 ring in '79, and then with widely changed incidents as hap- 

 pening in '81 making two expeditions. When he falls into 

 such a tremendous initial error, it is not to be wondered at 

 that the details he gives are very untrustworthy. Ramsey 

 corrects Haywood as far as the two separate expeditions are 

 concerned, but he makes a number of reckless statements ap- 

 parently on no better authority than the traditions current 

 among the border people, sixty or seventy years after the 

 event. These stand on the same foundation with the base- 

 less tale that makes Isaac Shelby take part in the battle of 

 Island Flats. The Tennessee historians treat Sevier as being 

 the chief commander ; but he was certainly under Campbell ; 

 the address they sent out to the Indians is signed by Camp- 

 bell first, Sevier second, and Martin third. Haywood, fol- 

 lowed by Ramsey, says that Sevier marched to the Chicka- 

 mauga towns, which he destroyed, and then marched down 

 the Coosa to the region of the Cypress Swamps. But Camp- 

 bell's official report says that the towns "in the neighborhood 

 of Chickamauga and the Town of Cologn, situated on the 

 sources of the Mobile" were not destroyed, nor visited, and 

 he carefully enumerates all the towns that the troops burned 

 and the regions they went through. They did not go near 

 Chickamauga nor the Coosa. Unless there is some docu- 

 mentary evidence in favor of the assertions of Haywood and 

 Ramsey they can not for a moment be taken against the ex- 

 plicit declaration of the official report. 



Mr. Kirke merely follows Ramsey, and adds a few flour- 



