ict instructions not to molest any of the
king's friends;[17] but they were far too intent on plunder and rapine
to discriminate between whig and tory. Accordingly their ravages drove
the best tories, who had at first hailed the Indian advance with joy,
into the patriot ranks, making the frontier almost solidly whig; save
for the refugees, who were willing to cast in their lot with the
savages.[18]

While the Creeks were halting and considering, and while the Choctaws
and Chickasaws were being visited by British emissaries, the Cherokees
flung themselves on the frontier folk. They had been short of
ammunition; but when the British agents sent them fifty horse-loads by a
pack-train that was driven through the Creek towns, they no longer
hesitated.[19] The agents showed very poor generalship in making them
rise so early, when there were no British troops in the southern States,
and when the Americans were consequently unhampered and free to deal
with the Indians.[20] Had the rising been put off until a British army
was in Georgia, it might well have proved successful.

The Cherokee villages stood in that cluster of high mountain chains
which mark the ending of the present boundaries of Georgia and both
Carolinas. These provinces lay east and southeast of them. Directly
north were the forted villages of the Watauga pioneers, in the valley of
the upper Tennessee, and beyond these again, in the same valley, the
Virginian outpost settlements. Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia were alike threatened by the outbreak, while the Watauga people
were certain to be the chief sufferers. The Cherokees were so near the
settlements that their incursions were doubly dangerous. On the other
hand, there was not nearly as much difficulty in dealing them a
counter-blow as in the case of the northern Indians, for their towns lay
thickly together and were comparatively easy of access. Moreover, they
were not rated such formidable fighters. By comparing Lord Dunmore's war
in 1774 with this struggle against the Cherokees in 1776, it is easy to
see the difference between a contest against the northern and one
against the southern tribes. In 1776 our Indian foes were more numerous
than in 1774, for there were over two thousand Cherokee
warriors--perhaps two thousand five hundred,--assisted by a few Creeks
and tories; they were closer to the frontier, and so their ravages were
more serious; but they did not prove such redoubtable foes