ded and disarmed. This rude treatment,
coupled with the brutal and wanton murder of some Cherokee
hunters a little earlier, by an irresponsible band of Virginians
under Captain Robert Wade, still further aggravated the Indians.

Incited by the French, who had fled to the southward after the
fall of Fort Duquesne, parties of bloodthirsty young Indians
rushed down upon the settlements and left in their path death and
desolation along the frontiers of the Carolinas. On the upper
branch of the Yadkin and below the South Yadkin near Fort Dobbs
twenty-two whites fell in swift succession before the secret
onslaughts of the savages from the lower Cherokee towns. Many of
the settlers along the Yadkin fled to the Carolina Fort at
Bethabara and the stockade at the mill; and the sheriff of Rowan
County suffered siege by the Cherokees, in his home, until
rescued by a detachment under Brother Loesch from Bethabara.
While many families took refuge in Fort Dobbs, frontiersmen under
Captain Morgan Bryan ranged through the mountains to the west of
Salisbury and guarded the settlements from the hostile incursions
of the savages. So gravely alarmed were the Rowan settlers,
compelled by the Indians to desert their planting and crops, that
Colonel Harris was despatched post-haste for aid to Cape Fear,
arriving there on July 1st. With strenuous energy Captain
Waddell, then stationed in the east, rushed two companies of
thirty men each to the rescue, sending by water-carriage six
swivel guns and ammunition on before him; and these
reinforcements brought relief at last to the harassed Rowan
frontiers." During the remainder of the year, the borders were
kept clear by bold and tireless rangers-under the leadership of
expert Indian fighters of the stamp of Grifth Rutherford and
Morgan Bryan.

When the Cherokee warriors who had wrought havoc along the North
Carolina border in April arrived at their town of Settiquo, they
proudly displayed the twenty-two scalps of the slain Rowan
settlers. Upon the demand for these scalps by Captain Demere at
Fort Loudon and under direction of Atta-kulla-kulla, the Settiquo
warriors surrendered eleven of the scalps to Captain Demere who,
according to custom in time of peace, buried them. New murders on
Pacolet and along the Virginia Path, which occurred shortly
afterward, caused gloomy forebodings; and it was plain, says a
contemporary gazette, that "the lower Cherokees were not
satisfied with the murder of the