district. They attempted to surprise one of the more considerable of the
lonely little forted towns. It was known as Buchanan's Station, and in
it there were several families, including fifteen "gun-men." Two spies
went out from it to scour the country and give warning of any Indian
advance; but with the Cherokees were two very white half-breeds, whose
Indian blood was scarcely noticeable, and these two men met the spies
and decoyed them to their death. The Indians then, soon after midnight
on the 30th of September, sought to rush the station by surprise. The
alarm was given by the running of the frightened cattle, and when the
sentinel fired at the assailants they were not ten yards from the gate
of the blockhouse. The barred door withstood the shock and the
flame-flashes lit up the night as the gun-men fired through the
loop-holes. The Indians tried to burn the fort, one of the chiefs, a
half-breed, leaping on the roof; he was shot through the thigh and
rolled off; but he stayed close to the logs trying to light them with
his torch, alternately blowing it into a blaze and halloing to the
Indians to keep on with the attack. However, he was slain, as was the
Shawnee head chief, and several warriors, while John Watts, leader of
the expedition, was shot through both thighs. The log walls of the grim
little blockhouse stood out black in the fitful glare of the cane torches;
and tongues of red fire streamed into the night as the rifles rang. The
attack had failed, and the throng of dark, flitting forms faded into
the gloom as the baffled Indians retreated. So disheartened were they
by the check, and by the loss they had suffered, that they did not
further molest the settlements, but fell back to their strongholds across
the Tennessee. Among the Cherokee chiefs who led the raid were two
signers of the treaty of Holston. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to
Robertson, Oct. 17, 1792; _Knoxville Gazette_, Oct. 10, and Oct. 20,
1792; Brown's Narrative, in _Southwestern Monthly_.]

Monotony of the Indian Outrages.

After this the war was open, so far as the Indians of the Lower Cherokee
Towns and of many of the Creek Towns were concerned; but the whites were
still restrained by strict orders from the United States authorities,
who refused to allow them to retaliate. Outrage followed outrage in
monotonously bloody succession. The Creeks were the worst offenders in
point of numbers, but the Lower Cherokees from the Chickamaug