ding some on
the Cumberland; and in the spring of 1788 he started by boat down the
Tennessee, to take possession of his claims. He took with him his wife
and his seven children; and three or four young men also went along.
When they reached the Chicamauga towns the Indians swarmed out towards
them in canoes. On Brown's boat was a swivel, and with this and the
rifles of the men they might have made good their defence; but as soon
as the Indians saw them preparing for resistance they halted and hailed
the crew, shouting out that they were peaceful and that in consequence
of the recent Holston treaties war had ceased between the white men and
the red. Brown was not used to Indians; he was deceived, and before he
made up his mind what to do, the Indians were alongside, and many of
them came aboard. [Footnote: Narrative of Col. Joseph Brown,
_Southwestern Monthly_, Nashville, 1851, i., p. 14. The story was told
when Brown was a very old man, and doubtless some of the details are
inaccurate.] They then seized the boat and massacred the men, while the
mother and children were taken ashore and hurried off in various
directions by the Indians who claimed to have captured them. One of the
boys, Joseph, long afterwards wrote an account of his captivity. He was
not treated with deliberate cruelty, though he suffered now and then
from the casual barbarity of some of his captors, and toiled like an
ordinary slave. Once he was doomed to death by a party of Indians, who
made him undress, so as to avoid bloodying his clothes; but they
abandoned this purpose through fear of his owner, a half-breed, and a
dreaded warrior, who had killed many whites.

Sevier Secures Release of Prisoners.

After about a year's captivity, Joseph and his mother and sisters were
all released, though at different times. Their release was brought about
by Sevier. When in the fall of 1788 a big band of Creeks and Cherokees
took Gillespie's station, on Little River, a branch of the upper
Tennessee, they carried off over a score of women and children. The four
highest chiefs, headed by one with the appropriate name of Bloody
Fellow, left behind a note addressed to Sevier and Martin, in which they
taunted the whites with their barbarities, and especially with the
murder of the friendly Cherokee chief Tassel, and warned them to move
off the Indian land. [Footnote: Ramsey, 519.] In response Sevier made
one of his swift raids, destroyed an Indian town on the Coosa