ginians invading the Overhill country at the same time that the
forces from North and South Carolina and Georgia destroyed the valley
and lower towns. Thus the Cherokees would be crushed with little danger.
It proved impossible, however, to get the attacks made quite
simultaneously.

The back districts of North Carolina suffered heavily at the outset;
however, the inhabitants showed that they were able to take care of
themselves. The Cherokees came down the Catawba murdering many people;
but most of the whites took refuge in the little forts, where they
easily withstood the Indian assaults. General Griffith Rutherford raised
a frontier levy and soon relieved the besieged stations. He sent word to
the provincial authorities that if they could only get powder and lead
the men of the Salisbury district were alone quite capable of beating
off the Indians, but that if it was intended to invade the Cherokee
country he must also have help from the Hillsborough men.[46] He was
promised assistance, and was told to prepare a force to act on the
offensive with the Virginians and South Carolinians.

Before he could get ready the first counter-blow had been struck by
Georgia and South Carolina. Georgia was the weakest of all the colonies,
and the part it played in this war was but trifling. She was threatened
by British cruisers along the coast, and by the Tories of Florida; and
there was constant danger of an uprising of the black slaves, who
outnumbered the whites. The vast herds of cattle and great rice
plantations of the south offered a tempting bait to every foe. Tories
were numerous in the population, while there were incessant bickerings
with the Creeks, frequently resulting in small local wars, brought on as
often by the faithlessness and brutality of the white borderers as by
the treachery and cruelty of the red. Indeed the Indians were only kept
quiet by presents, it being an unhappy feature of the frontier troubles
that while lawless whites could not be prevented from encroaching on the
Indian lands, the Indians, in turn could only be kept at peace with the
law-abiding by being bribed.[47]

Only a small number of warriors invaded Georgia. Nevertheless they
greatly harassed the settlers, capturing several families and fighting
two or three skirmishes with varying results.[48] By the middle of July
Col. Samuel Jack[49] took the field with a force of two hundred rangers,
all young men, the old and infirm being left to guar