, the sum of four thousand pounds was
appropriated by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of
"a Fort on our western frontier to protect and secure the
Catawbas" and for the support of two companies of fifty men each
to garrison this and another fort building on the sea coast. The
commissioners appointed for the purpose recommended (December 21,
1756) a site for the fort "near the 'Catawba nation"; and on
January 20, 1757, Governor Dobbs reported; "We are now building
a Fort in the midst of their towns at their own Request." The
fort thereupon begun must have stood near the mouth of the South
Fork of the Catawba River, as Dobbs says it was in the "midst" of
their towns, which are situated a "few miles north and south of
38 degrees" and might properly be included within a circle of
thirty miles radius."

During the succeeding months many depredations were committed by
the Indians upon the exposed and scattered settlements. Had it
not been for the protection afforded by all these forts, by the
militia companies under Alexander Osborne of Rowan and Nathaniel
Alexander of Anson, and by a special company of patrollers under
Green and Moore, the back settlers who had been so outrageously
"pilfered" by the Indians would have "retired from the Frontier
into the inner settlements."

CHAPTER V. In Defense of Civilization

We give thanks and praise for the safety and peace vouchsafed us
by our Heavenly Father in these times of war. Many of our
neighbors, driven hither and yon like deer before wild beasts,
came to us for shelter, yet the accustomed order of our
congregation life was not disturbed, no, not even by the more
than 150 Indians who at sundry times passed by, stopping for a
day at a time and being fed by us.--Wachovia Community Diary,
1757

With commendable energy and expedition Dinwiddie and Dobbs,
acting in concert, initiated steps for keeping the engagements
conjointly made by the two colonies with the Cherokees and the
Catawbas in the spring and summer of 1756. Enlisting sixty men,
"most of them Artificers, with Tools and Provisions," Major
Andrew Lewis proceeded in the late spring to Echota in the
Cherokee country. Here during the hot summer months they erected
the Virginia Fort on the path from Virginia, upon the northern
bank of the Little Tennessee, nearly opposite the Indian town of
Echota and about twenty-five miles southwest of Knoxville." While
the fort was in process of construction, the