on
a military tour which the Governor was making (1759) with intent to
overawe the savages. When this expedition reached Prince George, on the
upper waters of the Savannah, the Indian hostages were confined within
the fort; and the Governor, satisfied with the result of his maneuver
departed south for Charleston. Then followed a tragedy. Some Indian
friends of the imprisoned chiefs attacked the fort, and the commander,
a popular young officer, was treacherously killed during a parley. The
infuriated frontiersmen within the fort fell upon the hostages and slew
them all--twenty-six chiefs--and the Indian war was on.

If all were to be told of the struggle which followed in the Back
Country, the story could not be contained in this book. Many brave
and resourceful men went out against the savages. We can afford only a
passing glance at one of them. Hugh Waddell of North Carolina was the
most brilliant of all the frontier fighters in that war. He was a young
Ulsterman from County Down, a born soldier, with a special genius for
fighting Indians, although he did not grow up on the border, for he
arrived in North Carolina in 1753, at the age of nineteen. He was
appointed by Governor Dobbs to command the second company which North
Carolina had raised for the war, a force of 450 rangers to protect the
border counties; and he presently became the most conspicuous military
figure in the colony. As to his personality, we have only a few meager
details, with a portrait that suggests plainly enough those qualities
of boldness and craft which characterized his tactics. Governor Dobbs
appears to have had a special love towards Hugh, whose family he had
known in Ireland, for an undercurrent of almost fatherly pride is to be
found in the old Governor's reports to the Assembly concerning Waddell's
exploits.

The terror raged for nearly three years. Cabins and fields were burned,
and women and children were slaughtered or dragged away captives.
Not only did immigration cease but many hardy settlers fled from the
country. At length, after horrors indescribable and great toll of life,
the Cherokees gave up the struggle. Their towns were invaded and laid
waste by imperial and colonial troops, and they could do nothing but
make peace. In 1761 they signed a treaty with the English to hold "while
rivers flow and grasses grow and sun and moon endure."

In the previous year (1760) the imperial war had run its course in
America. New France lay