Had his friend, his brother, deserved this?
"I ask much of a friend--nothing of an enemy," declared Stuart, bluffly.
"You know my heart--trust me."
Atta-Kulla-Kulla yielded. If he experienced curiosity, the names of the two men which Stuart gave him afforded no clue as to the reason for their selection; one was a gun-smith, an armorer of uncommon skill, and Stuart knew that he was capable of dismounting and removing the cannon, without injury, through the tangled wilderness to Fort Prince George, should coercion overcome his resistance to the demands of the savages; the other, an artillery-man of long experience and much intelligence, himself adequately fitted to take command of the guns of the expedition, with a good chance of a successful issue. The ma.s.sacre had swept away most of the cannoneers, and Stuart was aware that the infantrymen left of the garrison would be hardly more capable of dealing with the problems of gun service than was Oconostota, their careless and casual observation being worth little more than his earnest, but dense ignorance. Nevertheless, with his exacting insistence on the extreme limit of demand, he begged Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose patience was wearing dangerously thin, to let him see them, speak to them for one moment.
"You can hear all I say--you who understand the English so well."
As he stepped into the old exhausted store-room, where the soldiers were herded together, squalid, heart-broken, ill, forlorn, Atta-Kulla-Kulla outside closing the door fast, a quavering cheer went up to greet Stuart. For one moment he stood silent while their eyes met--a moment fraught with feeling too deep for words. Then his voice rang out and he spoke to the point. He wanted to remind them, he said, how the action of the garrison had forced the surrender and left the officers no choice, no discretion; however the event would have fallen out, it would not have happened thus. "But I did not come here to mock your distress," he protested. "I wish to urge you to rely upon me now. I have hopes of securing the ransom of the garrison by the government,"--again a pitiful cheer,--"and as I may never be allowed to see you again this is my only chance. _Be sure of this_,--no man need hope for ransom who affords the Cherokees the slightest a.s.sistance in any enterprise against Fort Prince George, or takes up arms at their command."
He smiled, and waved his hat in courteous farewell, and stepped backward out of the door, apparently guarded by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, while that quavering huzza went up anew, the very sound almost breaking down his self-control.
The next day Stuart, accompanied by Atta-Kulla-Kulla, the warrior"s wife, his brother, the armorer, and the artillery-man,--the supposit.i.tious hunting party,--set gayly and leisurely forth. But once out of reach of espionage they traveled in a northeastern direction with the utmost expedition night and day through the trackless wilderness, guided only by the sun and moon. What terrors of capture, what hardships of fatigue, what anxious doubt and anguish of hope they endured, but added wings to the flight of the unhappy fugitives. Nine days and nights they journeyed thus, hardly relaxing a muscle.
On the tenth day, having gained the frontiers of Virginia, they fortunately fell in with a party of three hundred men, a part of Bird"s Virginia regiment, thrown out for the relief of any soldiers who might be escaping in the direction of that province from Fort Loudon, for through Hamish"s dispatches its state of blockade and straits of starvation had become widely bruited abroad. With the succor thus afforded and the terror of capture overpast, the four days" further travel were accomplished in comparative ease, and brought the fugitives to Colonel Bird"s camp, within the boundaries of Virginia.
Here Stuart parted from Atta-Kulla-Kulla, with many a protestation and many a regret, and many an urgent prayer that the chief would protect such of the unhappy garrison as were still imprisoned at Fort Loudon until they could be ransomed, measures for which Stuart intended to set on foot immediately. So the half-king of the Cherokees went his way back to his native wilds, loaded by Stuart with presents and commendations, and in no wise regretting the radical course he had taken.[14] Stuart had instantly sent off messengers to apprise the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threatened attack, and to acquaint the governor of South Carolina with the imminence of its danger and the fall of Fort Loudon, for Governor Bull had expected Virginia to raise the siege of Loudon, unaware that that province had dropped all thought of the attempt, finding its means utterly inadequate to march an army thither through those vast and tangled wildernesses carrying the necessary supplies for its own subsistence. Provisions for ten weeks were at once thrown into Fort Prince George, and a report was industriously circulated among the Indians that the ground about it on every side had been craftily mined to prevent approach.[15]
Stuart found that Hamish MacLeod, after performing his mission and setting out for his return to the beleaguered fort with the responsive dispatches, had succ.u.mbed to the extreme hardship of those continuous journeys throughout the wild fastnesses, many hundred miles of which were traversed on foot and at full speed under a blazing summer sun, and lay ill of brain-fever at one of the frontier settlements. There Stuart saw him--still so delirious that, although recognizing the officer in some sort, he talked wildly of pressing dispatches, of the inattention and callous hearts of officials in high station, of delays and long waitings for audience in official anterooms, of the prospect of any expedition of relief for the fort, of Odalie, and red calashes, and Savanukah, and rifle-shots, and Fifine, and "top-feathers," and Sandy--Sandy--Sandy; always Sandy!
Later, Stuart was apprised that the boy was on the way to recovery when he received a coherent letter from Hamish, who had learned that Stuart was using every endeavor--moving heaven and earth as the phrase went--to compa.s.s the ransom of the survivors of the garrison still at Fort Loudon or the Indian villages in its neighborhood. Hamish had heard of the fall of the fort and the ma.s.sacre of the evacuating force, and still staggering under the weight of the blow, he reminded Stuart peremptorily enough of the services which Odalie had rendered in venturing forth from the walls under the officer"s orders, when he dared not seek to induce a man to volunteer nor constrain one to the duty, and to urge upon his consideration the fact that she might be justly esteemed to have earned her ransom and that of her husband and child. Hamish had an immediate reply by a sure hand.
If it could avail aught to Mrs. MacLeod or any of her household, Stuart wrote with an uncharacteristic vehemence of protest, every influence he could exert, every half-penny he possessed, every drop of his blood would be cheerfully devoted to the service, so highly did he rate the lofty courage which had given to Fort Loudon its only chance of relief, and which under happier auspices would undoubtedly have resulted in raising the siege. Whatever might be forgotten, a.s.suredly it would not be the intrepid devotion of the "forlorn hope" of Fort Loudon.
Hamish, left to his own not overwise devices, decided to return to the country where he had quitted all that was dear to him, dangerous though that return might be. And, indeed, those wild western woods included the boundaries of all the world to him--elsewhere he felt alone and an alien. It seemed strange to realize that there were other people, other interests, other happenings of moment. He long remembered the sensation, and was wont to tell of it afterward, with which he discovered, camping one night at the foot of a tree--for he journeyed now by easy stages, keeping sedulously from the main trail through the forest--the traces of a previous presence, a bit of writing cut on the bark of the tree.
"Daniel Boon," it ran, "cilled a bar on tree in the year 1760."
That momentous year--that crucial time of endeavor and fluctuating hope and despair and death--a hunter here, all unaware of the maelstrom of mental and physical agony away there to the south in the shadow of the same mountain range, was pursuing his quiet sylvan craft, and slaughtering his "bar" and the alphabet with equal calm and aplomb.
Perhaps it was well for the future career of the adventurous young fellow that he fell in with some French traders, who were traveling with many packhorses well laden, and who designed to establish themselves with their goods at one of the Lower Towns of the Cherokees; they urged that he should attach himself to their march, whether from a humane sense of diminishing his danger, or because of the industry and usefulness and ever ready proffer of aid in the frank, bright, amiable boy, who showed a quality of good breeding quite beyond their custom, yet not unappreciated. They warned him that it would be certain death to him, and perhaps to his captive relatives, should he in a flimsy disguise, which he had fancied adequate, of dyeing his hair a singular yellow and walking with a limp, which he often alertly forgot, venture into the villages of those Cherokees by whom he had been so well known, and against whose interest he had been employed in such vigorous and bold aggression. The traders showed some genuine feeling of sympathy and a deep indignation, because of the treachery that had resulted in the ma.s.sacre of the garrison of Fort Loudon,--although the English were always the sworn foe of the French. The leader of the party, elderly, of commercial instincts rather than sylvan, albeit a dead shot, and decorated with ear-rings, had a great proclivity toward snuff and tears, and often indulged in both as a luxury when Hamish with his simple art sought to portray the characters of the tragedy of the siege; and as the Frenchman heard of Fifine and Odalie, and Stuart and Demere, and all their sufferings and courage and devices of despair--"_Quelle barbarie!_" he would burst forth, and Hamish would greet the phrase with a boyish delight of remembrance. Two or three of the party made an incursion into Chote when they reached its neighborhood, and returned with the news that the ransom of such of the garrison as were there had taken place, and they had been delivered to the commandant of Fort Prince George, but certain others had been removed to Huwhasee Town and among them were the French squaw, the pappoose, and the Scotchman. In his simplicity Hamish believed them, although Monsieur Galette sat late, with his delicate sentiments, over the camp-fire that night, and stared at it with red eyes, often suffused with tears, and took snuff after his slovenly fashion until he acquired the aspect of a blackened pointed muzzle, and looked in his elevated susceptibility like some queer uncla.s.sified baboon.
But at Huwhasee Town Hamish heard naught of those his memory cherished.
He was greatly amazed at the courage with which Monsieur Galette urged upon the head-men that some measures should be taken to induce Oconostota to remove that fence, of which they had heard at Chote, which had been built of the bones of the ma.s.sacred garrison, and give them burial from out the affronted gaze of Christian people. This was not pleasing, he said, not even to the French. He was evidently growing old and his heart was softening!
Lured by a vague rumor expressed among the party that those he sought had been removed to a remote Indian town on the Tsullakee River, Hamish broke away from Monsieur Galette, despite all remonstrances, to seek those he loved in the further west--if slaves, as Monsieur Galette suggested, he would rather share their slavery than without them enjoy the freedom of the king. And, constrained to receive two snuffy kisses on either cheek, he left Monsieur Galette shedding his frequent tears to mix with the snuff on his pointed muzzle.
And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their destination, to find only disappointment and a gnawing doubt, and a strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here, reading Monsieur Galette"s letter, looked at one another with grave faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the members of the family he sought were somewhere--oh, far away!--in the country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well--they made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and p.r.o.nouns disagreed, and dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition and also wore ear-rings--but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld.
And so down and down the Tsullakee River he went, and after the junction of the great tributary with the Ohio, he plied his paddle against the strong current and with the French hunter came into the placid waters of the beautiful Sewanee, or c.u.mberland, flouted by the north wind, his way winding for many miles in densest wintry solitudes.
For this was the great hunting-ground of the Cherokee nation and absolutely without population. His adventures were few and slight until he fell in with Daniel Boon, camping that year near the head waters of the Sewanee, who listened to his story with grave concern and a sane and effective sympathy. He, too, advised the cessation of these ceaseless wanderings, but he thought Stuart"s letter evasive, somehow, and counseled the boy to write to him once more, detailing these long searches and their futility. Hamish had always realized that Stuart"s sentiments, although by no means shallow, for he was warmly attached to his friends, were simple, direct, devoid of the subtlety that sometimes characterized his mental processes. Life to him was precious, a privilege, and its environment the mere incident.
He now replied that he had not dared divulge all the truth while Hamish MacLeod was in the enfeebled condition that follows brain-fever, and had been loath, too, to rob him of hope, only that he might forlornly mourn his nearest and dearest. But since the fact must needs be revealed he could yet say their sorrows were brief. In that drear dawn on the plains of Taliquo the mother and child were killed in the same volley of musketry, and afterward, as he ordered from time to time the ranks to close up, he saw Sandy, who had been fighting in line with the troops, lying on the ground, quite dead. "You may be sure of this," Stuart added; "I took especial note of their fate, having from the first cared much for them all."
The terrible certainty wrought a radical change in Hamish. From the moment he seemed, instead of the wild, impulsive, affectionate boy, a stern reserved man. In the following year he enlisted in a provincial regiment mustered to join the British regulars sent again by General Amherst to the relief of the Carolina frontier; for the difficulties in Canada being set at rest, troops could be put in the field in the south, and vengeance for the tragedy of Fort Loudon became a menace to the Cherokees, who had grown arrogant and aggressive, stimulated to further cruelties by their triumphs and immunity. Nevertheless, Atta-Kulla-Kulla went forth to meet the invaders, and earnestly attempted to negotiate a treaty. It was well understood now, however, that he was in no sense a representative man of his nation, and his mission failed.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, on whom Colonel Montgomery"s command had now devolved, at the head of this little army of British regulars and provincials, preceded by a vanguard of ninety Indian allies and thirty white settlers, painted and dressed like Indians, under command of Captain Quentin Kennedy,--in all about twenty-six hundred men,--continued to advance into the Cherokee country. At Etchoee, the scene of the final battle of Colonel Montgomery"s campaign in the previous year, they encountered the Cherokees in their whole force--the united warriors of all the towns. A furious battle ensued, both sides fighting with prodigies of valor and persistence, that resulted in breaking forever the power of the Cherokee nation. Three hours the rage of the fight lasted, and then the troops, pushing forward into the country, burned and slew on every side, wasting the growing crops all over the face of the land, and driving the inhabitants from the embers of their towns to the refuge of caves and dens of wild beasts in the mountains. They stayed not their hand till Atta-Kulla-Kulla came again, now to humbly sue for peace and for the preservation of such poor remnant as was left of his people.
After this the colonists came more rapidly into the region. A settlement sprang up at Watauga, the site of one of Hamish"s old camps as he had journeyed on his fruitless search for those who had made his home and the wilderness a sort of paradise. But the place, far away from Loudon though it was, seemed sad to him. The austere range of mountain domes on the eastern horizon looked down on him with suggestions which they imparted to none others who beheld them. He and they had confidences and a drear interchange of memories and a knowledge of a past that broke the heart already of the future. He was glad to look upon them no more! His mind had turned often to the trivial scenes, the happier times, when, unbereaved of hope, he had hunted with the Frenchman on the banks of the beautiful Sewanee River. And he welcomed the project of a number of the pioneers to carry their settlement on to the region of the French Salt Lick, which other hunters had already rendered famous, and with a few of these he made his way thither by land while the rest traveled by water, the way of his old journey in search of his lost happiness. And here he lived and pa.s.sed his days.
He heard from Stuart from time to time afterward, but not always with pleasure. It is true that it afforded him a sentiment of deep gratification to learn that the a.s.sembly of South Carolina had given Stuart a vote of thanks for his "courage, good conduct and long perseverance at Fort Loudon," with a testimonial of fifteen hundred pounds currency, and earnestly recommended him to the royal governor for a position of honor and profit in the service of the province; the office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the South having been created, Stuart"s appointment thereto by the Crown was received with the liveliest public satisfaction, it being a position that he was p.r.o.nounced in every way qualified to fill.[16] For some years this satisfaction continued, failing only when, in the growing differences between the colonists and Great Britain, Stuart, wholly devoted to the royal cause, conceived himself under obligations to carry out the instructions which the British War Department sent to him and the four royal governors of the southern provinces to use every endeavor to continue the Indians in their adherence to the British standard as allies against all its enemies; even concocting a plan with General Gage, Governor Tonyn, Lord William Campbell, and other royalists,--which plan happily failed,--to land a British army on the western coast of Florida, whence, joined by tories and Indians, the united force should fall upon the western frontiers of Carolina at the moment of attack on the eastern coast by a British fleet, in the hope that the province thus surrounded would be obliged to sue the royal government for peace.
Hamish had had some opportunity at Fort Loudon to observe the tenacity with which Stuart at all hazards adhered to his "instructions and the interest of the government," but in this crisis it ceased to appear in the guise of duty. In such a time it seemed to Hamish an independent, enlightened judgment partook of the values of a pious patriotism. A permanent breach in their friendship was made when Stuart wrote to Hamish to call his attention to the fact that the MacDonalds of Kingsburgh and the MacLeods and other leal Scotch hearts in the southern provinces were fighting under the royal banner. Hamish replied succinctly that "on whatever side the MacLeods fought, with whatever result, be sure the thing would be well done." As if to ill.u.s.trate the fact, he himself some time afterward set forth with the "mountain men"
to march against the royalists under Ferguson, and was among the victors in the battle of King"s Mountain.
In the earlier times of the settlement of the State, fraught with troubles with the Indians, who, more timorous than formerly, were yet more skulking, Hamish was wont to take with hearty good-will to the rifle, the knife, the pistol, and the firebrand. He was with Sevier on more than one of those furious forays, when vengeance nerved the hand and hardened the heart, for many of the pioneers avenged the slain of their own household. But as he grew old, the affinity of his hand for the trigger slackened, and he liked only the blaze of the benignant fireside; sometimes he would laugh and shake his gray head and declare that he reminded himself of Monsieur Galette, with his theories of sweet peace in that fierce land, and his soft heart and his sinewy old hand that could send a bullet so straight from the bore of his flintlock rifle. And so great a favorite did Monsieur Galette become in Hamish"s fireside stories, so often clamored for, that he would ask his grandchildren, cl.u.s.tering about him, if they would like him better with a muzzle of snuff and a pair of ear-rings and a tear-discoursing eye, and declare that he must take measures to secure these embellishments.
And so, gradually, by slow degrees, he was led on to talk of the past,--of the beautiful Carolina girl who had been his brother"s wife, of the quaint babble of Fifine, of Stuart and Demere, of Corporal O"Flynn, and the big drum-major, and the queer old African cook, and the cat that had been so cherished--but he never, never ventured a word of Sandy, to the last day of his life; Sandy!--for whom he had had almost a filial veneration blended with the admiring applausive affection of the younger brother for the elder.
When he had grown very old--for he died only in 1813--he had a beneficent illusion that might come but to one standing, as could be said, on the borderland of the two worlds. It came in dreams, such perhaps as old men often dream, but his experiences made it the tenderer. Sometimes in the golden afternoon of summer, as he sat in placid sleep, with his long, white hair falling about his shoulders, one of his wrinkled, veinous hands lying on the arm of his chair would tremble suddenly and contract with a strong grasp, and he would look up, at naught, with a face of such joyous recognition and tender appeal, that the children, playing about, would pause in their mirth and ask, with awe, what had he seen. And it seemed that he had felt his hand caught with a certain playful clasp such as years ago--more than half a century--Odalie was wont to give it, when she had been waiting for him long, and would wait no longer. And looking up, he could see her standing there, waiting still, smiling serenely, joyously as of yore; and so she would stand till the dream vanished in the reality of the children cl.u.s.tering around his knees, besieging him once more for the story of Old Fort Loudon.
NOTES
1 Page 8. In addition to luring an enemy within shot by the mimicry of the voice of bird or beast the Indians" consummate art of ambuscade enabled them to imitate the footprints of game by affixing the hoofs of deer or buffalo or the paws of bear to their own feet and hands, and thus duplicate the winding progress of these animals for miles with such skill as to deceive not merely the white settlers, new to the country, but Indian enemies of other tribes, expert woodmen like themselves.
2 Page 18. The name of this famous town is variously given. Adair spells it as Choate. Bancroft inclines to Chotee. Bartram has it as Chote-Great. Some of the old maps show it as Chotte. Modern historians of Tennessee, Hayward, J. G. M. Ramsey, Putnam, and others make it Chota, but most of the earlier writers concerning this region adopt the French rendering and call it Chote; Hewatt, however, David Ramsey, and others use the _accent grave_, Chote. This town, seldom alluded to without the phrase "old town" or "beloved town," to distinguish it from another Indian village of the same name among the Lower Towns, was a veritable "city of refuge," and the only one of the Cherokee nation. A murderer, even if a white man and the victim a Cherokee, might live for years here secure from vengeance. Although there is an instance known of a malefactor, who sought an asylum here and was prevented from landing, being held down in the Tennessee River until drowned, still the rule was inviolable that if the refugee could but gain a footing on the ever-sacred soil, he was as safe as if clinging to the horns of an altar. This fact contributed, with other confirmatory circ.u.mstances of usage and tradition, to continue the speculations touching the ident.i.ty of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel. Humboldt says that from the most remote times of the Missions the opinion has been entertained that the languages of the American Indians and the Hebrew display extraordinary a.n.a.logies. He ascribes this fact to the position of the personal and possessive p.r.o.nouns at the end of the nouns and verbs, and the numerous tenses of the latter, a characteristic of both the Indian and Hebrew tongues which naturally struck the attention of the monks. An a.n.a.logy, however, does not go far to prove an ident.i.ty of origin. He refers to Adair as among travelers "somewhat credulous who have heard the strains of the Hebrew Hallelujah among the Chickasaws and Choctaws of North America,"--and he might have added the Cherokees also.
James Adair, however, could hardly be called a traveler. He published in London in 1775 the results of his observation during a residence of forty years as a trader among the Chickasaws and neighboring tribes. He adduces many a.n.a.logies of their languages with the Hebrew, and calls attention to many customs for which he seeks to discern precedent in the Mosaic dispensation. How much he had read of previous speculations it is impossible to say. He protests that he is but a trader and not "a skillful Hebraist," by his vocation obliged to write far from all libraries, literary a.s.sociations, and conversation with the learned, compelled even to keep his papers secret from the observation of the Indians, always very jealous of the enigmatical "black marks" of the traders" correspondence, but he quotes largely from many writers both English and foreign--the Reverend Mr. Thorowgood, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Acosta, Benzo, etc., and shows considerable aptness of logic in adapting his theories to his investigations into the structure of the Indian languages. Such nice verbal distinctions, such order and symmetry, such a train of subtle and exact religious terms, he argues, could not be invented by a people so ignorant and illiterate as the modern Indian, and contends that they obviously bear all the distinctive marks of a language of culture. He further declares that one of the Chickasaw prophets, _the Loache_, a.s.sured him that they had once had an "old beloved speech," which in the course of time and national degeneration they had lost. In this connection, but entirely apart from all Hebraic a.n.a.logies, one is moved to wonder if there were also among them a reminiscence of an "old beloved character," and if the extraordinary invention of the Cherokee character of the "syllabic alphabet" by the Indian, Guest, early in the present century, partly partakes of the nature of tradition.
3 Page 22. The high value which the French government placed on the services of these allies may be inferred from a remark which has come down from a council of state, in reference to their conduct in this battle: "_Quoique je n"approuve pas qu"on mange les morts, cependant il ne faut pas quereller avec ces bonnetes gens pour des bagatelles._"
4 Page 38. Among others bearing witness to these strange relics, Timothy Flint says, in his _History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley_: "In this state [Tennessee] burying grounds have been found where the skeletons seem all to have been pigmies. The graves in which the bodies were deposited are seldom more than two feet or two feet and a half in length. To obviate the objection that these are all the bodies of children, it is affirmed that the skulls are found to have possessed the _dentes sapientiae_ and must have belonged to persons of mature age. The two bodies that were found in the vast limestone cavern in Tennessee, one of which I saw at Lexington, were neither of them more than four feet high; the hair seemed to have been sandy, or inclining to yellow.
It is well known that nothing is so uniform in the present Indian as his lank, black hair. From the pains taken to preserve the bodies, and the great labor of making the funeral robes in which they were folded, they must have been of the "blood royal" or personages of consideration in their day." (Hayward, in his quaint and rare _Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee_, referring to the curious method of interment, in a copperas cave, of two mummies, both of full size, however, arrayed in fabrics of great beauty, evincing much mechanical skill in manufacture, also mentions the hair on the heads of both as long, and of a yellow cast and a fine texture.) Webber, in his _Romance of Natural History_, gives the size of the diminutive sarcophagi of the supposed pygmies found in Tennessee as three feet in length by eighteen inches in depth.
Hayward also mentions the pygmy dwellers of Tennessee, and another writer still, describing one of these singular graveyards of the "little people," states that the bones were strong and well formed, and that one of the skeletons had about its neck ninety-four pearls. The painfully prosaic hypothesis of certain craniologists that such relics were only those of children is, of course, rejected by any person possessed of the resources of imagination.
5 Page 40. This name is also given in one or two instances as Dejean, and several dates both earlier and later have been a.s.signed to the disastrous visit to Chote to which reference is here made.
6 Page 82. Washington readily recognized the futility of the c.u.mbrous regular military methods in a rough, unsettled country. On the Forbes expedition, to counteract the French and their Indian allies, Washington continually sent out small parties of the Cherokees under his command.
"Small parties of Indians," said he, "will more effectually hara.s.s the enemy by keeping them under continual alarms than any parties of white men can do." However, "with all his efforts," says Irving, "he was never able to make the officers of the regular army appreciate the importance of Indian allies in these campaigns in the wilderness." But the fact has been taught elsewhere, both earlier and later than Washington"s day.
General Gordon, in his journal, says of the Soudan: "A heavy lumbering column is nowhere in this land. Parties of forty or sixty men moving swiftly about will do more than any column. Native allies, above all things, at whatever cost. It is the country of the irregular, not of the regular. I can say I owe the defeats in this country to having artillery with me, which delayed me much, and it was the artillery with Hicks which in my opinion did for him." And as if he himself merely turned back a leaf instead of the pages of centuries, he here inserts an extract from Herodotus: "Cambyses marched against the Ethiopians without making any provision for the subsistence of his army or once considering that he was going to carry his arms to the remotest parts of the world, but as a madman ... before the army had pa.s.sed over a fifth of the way all the provisions were exhausted, and the beasts of burden were eaten.... Now if Cambyses had then led his army back he would have proved himself a wise man. He, however, went on ... the report was that heaps of sand covered them over, and they disappeared." Gordon comments, "Hicks" army disappeared. The expedition was made into these lands."
7 Page 137. This pride flourished probably too far on the frontier to be deteriorated by the knowledge of the gradual decline in the popularity of the periwig then in progress, for only a few years later the wig-makers of London found it necessary to pet.i.tion the king, setting forth their distresses occasioned by the perversity of the men of his realm in persisting in wearing their own hair. The most definite outcome of this proceeding was the sprightly travesty of the pet.i.tion, appearing in the _Gentleman"s Magazine_ on behalf of the carpenters, entreating his majesty to wear a wooden leg himself, and to require this of all his subjects, since otherwise the advent of peace bade fair to ruin the joiner"s trade in wooden legs.
8 Page 148. The Duke of c.u.mberland has never been considered what is prettily called a "lovely character." His temperament, which would not even brook that certain gentlemen, whom he denominated with a profane adjective "old women," should talk to him "about humanity" (and it may be said in pa.s.sing that these hopeful "old women" were most obviously condemned to disappointment at least), his rigid discipline of his own troops, and his unparalleled brutality to the enemy, leave the devotion exhibited for him by his soldiers to be accounted for only by the admiration which they felt for his personal courage, which was very great, and of which Walpole tells a good story about this time,--of course before the days of anaesthetics: "The Duke of c.u.mberland is quite recovered after an incision of many inches into his knee. Ranby [the surgeon] did not dare to propose that a hero should be tied, but was frightened out of his senses when the hero _would_ hold the candle himself, which none of his generals could bear to do: in the middle of the operation the Duke said "Hold!" Ranby said, "For G.o.d"s sake, Sir, let me proceed now--it will be worse to renew it." The Duke repeated, "I say, hold!" and then calmly bade them give Ranby a clean waistcoat and cap; "for," said he, "the poor man has sweated through these." It was true; but the Duke did not utter a groan."
9 Page 168. It is with a renewal of confidence in the better aspects of human nature, and the genuineness of such sanctions as control civilized war that we realize that the French and English officers encountering dangers so far transcending legitimate perils as those pervading Indian fighting manifested individually, now and again, a true and soldierly sympathy with one another, and sought to protect the helpless in their power, often liberating those exposed to torture at the hands of their savage allies. For the methods of the Indians were by no means ameliorated by a.s.sociation with their civilized comrades, and they could scarcely be held subject to any control. Washington himself, whose capacity in authority amounted to a special genius, even when only a young provincial officer, could not restrain his Indian allies from scalping the slain, and in several instances it required his utmost exertions to prevent a like fate from befalling his own living prisoners.
10 Page 217. Governor Lyttleton on the request of Atta-Kulla-Kulla released Oconostota, Fiftoe, the chief warrior of Keowee Town, and the head warrior of Estatoe, who the next day surrendered two other Indians to be held as subst.i.tutes. Although it has been generally said that there were twenty-two hostages, only twenty-one seem to have been detained, and it is therefore possible that Oconostota was liberated without exchange, on account of his position and influence in the tribe, being always known as the "Great Warrior." The names of the hostages detained are as follows: Chenohe, Ousanatanah, Tallichama, Tallitahe, Quarrasatahe, Connasaratah, Kataetoi, Ota.s.site of Watogo, Ousanoletah of Jore, Kataletah of Cowetche, Chisquatalone, Skiagusta of Sticoe, Tanaesto, Wohatche, Wyejah, Oucachistanah, Nicolche, Tony, Toatiahoi, Shallisloske, and Chistie.
11 Page 236. Bancroft says this detached force comprised six hundred Highlanders and six hundred Royal Americans. Adair says it consisted of twelve hundred Highlanders. Other historians add to this number a body of grenadiers. Hewatt, who writes almost contemporaneously, publishing in 1779, and who was a resident of Charlestown, where the force landed and whence it departed, states that it consisted of a battalion of Highlanders and four companies of the Royal Scots, and it was there joined by a company of South Carolina Volunteers. He further mentions that upon Colonel Montgomery"s return to New York he left four companies of his force in Charlestown, upon the urgent request of the governor and a.s.sembly, to aid the defense of the Carolina frontier, and that these were of the royal regiment under the command of Major Frederick Hamilton. The Royal Scots, being one of the oldest and most celebrated of military organizations, has the peculiar claim on the consideration of all the world, that having been the body-guard of King Louis XI. of France, the renowned Scottish Archers, it must surely bear on the ancient and ill.u.s.trious rolls the ever-cherished name of Quentin Durward, for are we not told that the venerable commander of the guard, Lord Crawford, entered it there himself? And if it is not now to be seen, why--so much the worse for the ancient and ill.u.s.trious rolls!
12 Page 261. The personal vanity of the Cherokees was so great that after discovering the functions of a mirror the men were never without one. Even in their most unimpeded war-trim they carried a mirror slung over one shoulder and consulted it from time to time with pleasure doubtless. When the small-pox broke out among them, those whose appearance had suffered from that disease could not endure to survive their disfigurement, and promptly took their own lives, although suicides were buried without the highly esteemed honors usually paid to the dead.
13 Page 366. The temperament of Atta-Kulla-Kulla seems far more complex than the simple traits attributed usually to untrained character. Apart from his savage craft, courage, and a sort of natural eloquence which he shared with his tribe, the close discernment shown in some of his speeches still extant, his magnanimity, his capacity to receive and a.s.similate new impressions, his diplomatic talents, all suggest a versatile mind, and he also possessed a caustic wit to which he was wont to give rein touching the oft-broken promises of one of the governors of South Carolina, from whom it is related he had received many letters which he said "were not agreeable to the old beloved speech." He kept them regularly piled in a bundle in the order in which he had received them, and often showed them. ""The first," he used to say, "contained a _little_ truth," and he would devise fantastic excuses for the failure of the rest of it, urging the governor"s perplexing rush of official business which had occasioned him to forget his strong promises. "But count," said he, "the lying black marks of this one"--and he would descant minutely on every circ.u.mstance of it." His patience, he would declare, was exhausted, and he felt that the letters were "nothing but an heap of broad black papers and ought to be burnt in the old year"s fire." The old year"s fire was a symbol of departed values, the new year"s fire being kindled with great ceremony by the Cheera-taghe, or prophets, "men of the divine fire."
14 Page 386. It is pleasant to know that this strong friendship suffered no diminution by reason of time and distance. Bartram relates that when he traveled in the Cherokee country in 1773 he met descending the heights a company of Indians all well mounted on horses. "I observed a chief at the head of the caravan, and as they came up I turned off from the path to make way in token of respect, which compliment was accepted and gracefully and magnanimously returned, for his highness, with a gracious and cheerful smile, came up to me and clapping his hand on his breast offered it to me, saying, "I am Ata-Cul-Culla," and heartily shook hands with me, and asked me if I knew it. I answered that the good spirit who goes before me spoke to me and said "that is the great Ata-Cul-Culla."" The chief then asked him if he came direct from Charlestown, and if his friend John Stuart were well. Mr. Bartram was able to his great pleasure to reply that he had seen John Stuart very recently, and that he was well.
15 Page 386. French emissaries were shortly in the vicinity of this fort. At a great meeting of the Cherokee nation the indefatigable Louis Latinac struck a hatchet into a log, crying out, "Who will take up this for the king of France?" Saloue, the young warrior of Estatoe, instantly laid hold of it, exclaiming, "I am for war!" And in indors.e.m.e.nt of this compact many tomahawks were brandished, already red with British blood.