140 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
Mention is again found of the Cherokees in the year 1712, when 218 
of them accompanied Colonel Barnwell in his expedition against the 
hostile Tuscaroras and aided in the subjugation of that savage tribe, 
though along the route of Barnwell’s march the settlers were very nearly 
persuaded that they suffered greater damage to property from the 
freebooting propensities of their Indian allies than from the open hos- 
tilities of their savage enemies. 
The old colonial records of South Carolina also contain mention in the 
following year (1713) of the fact that Peter St. Julien was arraigned on 
the charge of holding two Cherokee women in slavery.! 
In 1715 the Yamassees, a powerful and hitherto friendly tribe, oceu- 
pying the southwesterly portion of the colony of South Carolina and 
extending to and beyond the Savannah River, declared open hostilities 
against the settlers. In the desperate struggle that ensued, we find in 
full alliance with them the Cherokees, as well as the Creeks and Ap- 
palachians. 
In his historical journal of the establishment of the French in Lou- 
isiana, Bernard de la Harpe states that “in January, 1716, some of the 
Cheraquis Indians, who lived northeast of Mobile, killed MM. de Ramsay 
and de Longueil. Some time after, the father of the latter gentleman, 
the King’s lieutenant in Canada, engaged the Iroquois to surprise this 
tribe. They sacked two of their villages and obliged the rest to retreat 
towards New England.” 
TERRITORY OF CHEROKEES AT PERIOD OF ENGLISIT SETTLEMENT. 
At the time of the English settlement of the Carolinas the Chero- 
kees occupied a diversified and well-watered region of country of large 
extent upon the waters of the Catawba, Broad, Saluda, Keowee, i'uga- 
loo, Savannah, and Coosa Rivers on the east and south, and several of 
the tributaries of the Tennessee on the north and west. It is impossible 
at this late day to define with absolute accuracy the original limits of 
the Cherokee claim. In fact, like all other tribes, they had no definite 
and concurrent understanding with their surrounding savage neighbors 
where the possessions of the one left off and those of the other began. 
The strength of their title to any particular tract of country usually 
decreased in proportion to the increase of the distance from their®vil- 
lages; and it commonly followed as a result, that a considerable strip 
of territory between the settlements of two powerful tribes, though 
claimed by both, was practically considered as neutral ground and the 
common hunting ground of both. 
As has already been stated, the extreme eastern settlements of the 
Cherokees in South Carolina in 1693 were in the district of country lying 
between the Catawba and Broad Rivers, and no claim has been found 
showing the existence at any time of any assertion of territorial right 

' Logan’s South Carolina, Vol. I, p. 182. 
