he spirit of
the nation. They had chosen the position of greatest strength to make
their stand, and brought to the struggle their best spirits and bravest
warriors. In the issue, they had shown, by their dogged and determined
valor, the great importance which it carried in their eyes. The day
once decided against them, they appeared to be equally without heart and
hope; they no longer appeared in arms--no longer offered defence--and
the army of the Carolinians marched through the heart of the nation,
searching its secret settlements, and everywhere inflicting the severest
penalties of war. The rest of the campaign was an easy progress, and
terrible was the retribution which it brought with it. No less than
fourteen of their towns, in the middle settlements, shared the fate of
Etchoee. Their granaries were yielded to the flames, their cornfields
ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the unsparing sword,
took refuge, with their almost starving families, among the barren
mountains, which could yield them little but security. A chastisement so
extreme was supposed to be necessary, in order to subdue for ever that
lively disposition for war, upon the smallest provocation, which, of
late years, the Cherokees had manifested but too frequently; but it may
be doubted whether the means which were employed for administering this
admonitory lesson, were of the most legitimate character. We must always
continue to doubt that humanity required the destruction of towns and
hamlets, whose miserable walls of clay and roofs of thatch could give
shelter to none but babes and sucklings--women with their young--those
who had never offended, and those who could not well offend--the
innocent victims to an authority which they never dared oppose. The
reckless destruction of their granaries--fields yet growing with
grain--necessarily exposed to the worst privations of famine only those
portions of the savage population who were least guilty. The warrior
and hunter could readily relieve himself from the gnawing necessities of
hunger. He could wander off to remote tribes, and, armed with rifle or
bow, could easily secure his game, sufficient for his own wants, from
the contiguous forest. But these were resources inaccessible to the
weak, the old, the timid, and the imbecile. Surely, it was a cruel
measure of war, and if necessary to the safety of the whites, renders
still more criminal the wanton excesses of the latter, by which it wa