as
Cornstalk's warriors, their villages were easier reached, and a more
telling punishment was inflicted.

The Cherokees had been showing signs of hostility for some time. They
had murdered two Virginians the previous year;[21] and word was brought
to the settlements, early in the summer of '76, that they were
undoubtedly preparing for war, as they were mending guns, making
moccasins and beating flour for the march.[22] In June their ravages
began.[23] The Otari, or Overhill Cherokees, had sent runners to the
valley towns, asking their people to wait until all were ready before
marching, that the settlements might be struck simultaneously; but some
of the young braves among the lower towns could not be restrained, and
in consequence the outlying settlers of Georgia and the Carolinas were
the first to be assailed.

The main attack was made early in July, the warriors rushing down from
their upland fastnesses in fierce and headlong haste, the different
bands marching north, east, and southeast at the same moment. From the
Holston to the Tugelou, from southwestern Virginia to northwestern
Georgia, the back-county settlements were instantly wrapped in the
sudden horror of savage warfare.

The Watauga people, the most exposed of all, received timely warning
from a friendly squaw,[24] to whom the whites ever after showed respect
and gratitude. They at once began to prepare for the stroke; and in all
the western world of woodsmen there were no men better fitted for such a
death grapple. They still formed a typical pioneer community; and their
number had been swelled from time to time by the arrival of other bold
and restless spirits. Their westernmost settlement this year was in
Carter's valley; where four men had cleared a few acres of corn-land,
and had hunted buffalo for their winter's meat.[25]

As soon as they learned definitely that the Otari warriors, some seven
hundred in number, were marching against them, they took refuge in their
wooden forts or stations. Among the most important of these were the one
at Watauga, in which Sevier and Robertson held command, and another
known as Baton's Station, placed just above the forks of the
Holston.[26] Some six miles from the latter, near the Long Island or Big
Island of the Holston, lay quite a large tract of level land, covered
with an open growth of saplings, and known as the Island flats.

The Indians were divided into several bands; some of their number
crossed over