r situation that panic
took hold on them, and they would have fled but for the influence of
Robertson. He may have put the question to them in the biblical words,
"Whither shall I flee?" For they were surrounded, and those who did
attempt to escape were "weighed on the path and made light." Robertson
knew that their only chance of survival was to stand their ground. The
greater risks he was willing to take in person, for it was he who made
trips to Boonesborough and Harrodsburg for a share of the powder and
lead which John Sevier was sending into Kentucky from time to time. In
the stress of conflict Robertson bore his full share of grief, for his
two elder sons and his brother fell. He himself was often near to death.
One day he was cut off in the fields and was shot in the foot as he ran,
yet he managed to reach shelter. There is a story that, in an attack
during one of his absences, the Indians forced the outer gate of the
fort and Mrs. Robertson went out of her cabin, firing, and let loose a
band of the savage dogs which the settlers kept for their protection,
and so drove out the invaders.

The Chickasaws were loyal to the treaty they had made with the British
in the early days of James Adair's association with them. They were
friends to England's friends and foes to her foes. While they resented
the new settlements made on land they considered theirs, they signed a
peace with Robertson at the conclusion of the War of Independence.
They kept their word with him as they had kept it with the British.
Furthermore, their chief, Opimingo or the Mountain Leader, gave
Robertson his assistance against the Creeks and the Choctaws and, in so
far as he understood its workings, informed him of the new Spanish and
French conspiracy, which we now come to consider. So once again the
Chickasaws were servants of destiny to the English-speaking race, for
again they drove the wedge of their honor into an Indian solidarity
welded with European gold.

Since it was generally believed at that date that the tribes were
instigated to war by the British and supplied by them with their
ammunition, savage inroads were expected to cease with the signing of
peace. But Indian warfare not only continued; it increased. In the last
two years of the Revolution, when the British were driven from the
Back Country of the Carolinas and could no longer reach the tribes with
consignments of firearms and powder, it should have been evident that
the Indian