as those I can
confide in they cou'd not have less than 10 or 12 killed and
wounded; The next Morning we found a great deal of Blood and one
dead whom I suppose they cou'd not find in the night. On my side
I had 2 Men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he is
scalped, the other is in way of Recovery, and one boy killed near
the fort whom they durst not advance to scalp. I expected they
would have paid me another visit last night, as they attack all
Fortifications by Night, but find they did not like their
Reception."

Alarmed by Waddell's "offensive-defensive," the Indians abandoned
the siege. Robert Campbell, Waddell's ranger, who was scalped in
this engagement, subsequently recovered from his wounds and was
recompensed by the colony with the sum of twenty pounds.

In addition to the frontier militia, four independent companies
were now placed under Waddell's command. Companies of volunteers
scoured the woods in search of the lurking Indian foe. These
rangers, who were clad in hunting-shirts and buckskin leggings,
and who employed Indian tactics in fighting, were captained by
such hardy leaders as the veteran Morgan Bryan, the intrepid
Griffith Ruthe ford, the German partisan, Martin Phifer
(Pfeiffer), and Anthony Hampton, the father of General Wade
Hampton. They visited periodically a chain of "forest castles"
erected by the settlers--extending all the way from Fort Dobbs
and the Moravian fortifications in the Wachau to Samuel
Stalnaker's stockade on the Middle Fork of the Holston in
Virginia. About the middle of March, thirty volunteer Rowan
County rangers encountered a band of forty Cherokees, who
fortified themselves in a deserted house near the Catawba River.
The famous scout and hunter, John Perkins, assisted by one of his
bolder companions, crept up to the house and flung lighted
torches upon the roof. One of the Indians, as the smoke became
suffocating and the flames burned hotter, exclaimed: "Better for
one to die bravely than for all to perish miserably in the
flames," and darting forth, dashed rapidly hither and thither, in
order to draw as many shots as possible. This act of superb
self-sacrifice was successful; and while the rifles of the
whites, who riddled the brave Indian with balls, were empty, the
other savages made a wild dash for liberty. Seven fell thus under
the deadly rain of bullets; but many escaped. Ten of the Indians,
all told, lost their scalps, for which the volunteer rangers