kamaugan towns
on the Tennessee River, under the leadership of Dragging Canoe. The
Chickamaugans embraced the more vicious and bloodthirsty Cherokees, with
a mixture of Creeks and bad whites, who, driven from every law-abiding
community, had cast in their lot with this tribe. The exact number of
white thieves and murderers who had found harbor in the Indian towns
during a score or more of years is not known; but the letters of the
Indian agents, preserved in the records, would indicate that there were
a good many of them. They were fit allies for Dragging Canoe; their
hatred of those from whom their own degeneracy had separated them was
not less than his.

In July, 1776, John Sevier wrote to the Virginia Committee as follows:

"Dear Gentlemen: Isaac Thomas, William Falling, Jaret Williams and one
more have this moment come in by making their escape from the Indians
and say six hundred Indians and whites were to start for this fort and
intend to drive the country up to New River before they return."

Thus was heralded the beginning of a savage warfare which kept the
borderers engaged for years.

It has been a tradition of the chroniclers that Isaac Thomas received
a timely warning from Nancy Ward, a half-caste Cherokee prophetess who
often showed her good will towards the whites; and that the Indians
were roused to battle by Alexander Cameron and John Stuart, the British
agents or superintendents among the overhill tribes. There was a letter
bearing Cameron's name stating that fifteen hundred savages from the
Cherokee and Creek nations were to join with British troops landed at
Pensacola in an expedition against the southern frontier colonies.
This letter was brought to Watauga at dead of night by a masked man who
slipped it through a window and rode away. Apparently John Sevier
did not believe the military information contained in the mysterious
missive, for he communicated nothing of it to the Virginia Committee.
In recent years the facts have come to light. This mysterious letter
and others of a similar tenor bearing forged signatures are cited in a
report by the British Agent, John Stuart, to his Government. It appears
that such inflammatory missives had been industriously scattered through
the back settlements of both Carolinas. There are also letters from
Stuart to Lord Dartmouth, dated a year earlier, urging that something be
done immediately to counteract rumors set afloat that the British were
endeavoring to