50 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth,asn.19 



the lowei" Cherokee towns about the head of Savannah river, burninj^ 

 one town after another, cutting down the peach trees and ripened 

 corn, and having an occasional brush with the Cherokee, who hung con- 

 stantly upon their flanks. At the town of Seneca, near which they 

 encountered Cameron with his Indians and Tories, they had desti'oyed 

 six thousand bushels of corn, besides other food stores, after burning all 

 the houses, the Indians having retreated after a stout resistance. The 

 most serious encounter had taken place at Tomassee, where several 

 whites and sixteen Cherokee were killed, the latter being all scalped 

 afterward. Having completed the ruin of the Lower towns, Wil- 

 liamson had crossed over Kabun gap and descended into the valley of the 

 Little Tennessee to cooperate with Rutherford in the destruction of the 

 Middle and Valley towns. As the army advanced every house in every 

 settlement met was burned — ninety houses in one settlement alone — and 

 detachments were sent into the fields to destroy the corn, of which the 

 smallest town was estimated to have two hundred acres, besides pota- 

 toes, beans, and orchards of peach trees. The stores of dressed deer- 

 ski ns and other valua))les were carried off. Everything was swept clean, 

 and the Indians who were not killed or taken were driven, homeless 

 refugees, into the dark recesses of Nantahala or painfully made their 

 way across to the Overhill towns in Tennessee, which were already 

 menaced by another invasion from the north.' 



In July, while Williamson was engaged on the the upper Savannah, 

 a force of two hundred Georgians, under Colonel Samuel Jack, had 

 marched in the same direction and succeeded in burning two towns on 

 the heads of Chattahoochee and Tugaloo rivers, destroying the corn 

 and driving ofi' the cattle, without the loss of a man, the Cherokee 

 having apparently falltMi liack to concentrate for resistance in the 

 mountains.'- 



The Virginia army, al)out two thousand strong, under Colonel 

 William Christian (18), rendezvoused in August at the Long island 

 of the Holston. the i-egular gathering place on the Tennessee side of 

 the mountains. Among them were several hundred men from North 

 Carolina, with all who could be spared from the garrisons on the 

 Tennessee side. Paying but little attention to small bodies of Indi- 

 ans, who tried to divert attention or to delay progress by flank attacks, 

 they advanced steadily, but cautiously, along the great Indian war- 

 path (ly) toward the crossing of the French Broad, where a strong 

 force of Cherokee was reported to be in waiting to dispute their pas- 

 sage. Just before reaching the river the Indians sent a Tory trader 



'For Williamson's expedition, see Ross Journal, with Rockwell's note.s, in Historical MngaEine, 

 October, 1876; Swain, Sketch of the Indian War in' 1776, in North Carolina University Magazine for 

 May, 1852, reprinted in Historical JIagazine, November, 1867; Jones, Georgia, ii, p. 246 et passim, 

 1883; Ramsey, Tennessee, 163-164, lS.i3; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, i. pp. '296-303, 1S89. 



= Jones, op. cit.,p. '246; Ramsey, op. cit, p. 163: Roosevelt, o|). cit..p. '29.'). 



