t he be overtaken on the way, avoided with a great struggle
the temptation, mustered all his courage, and adopting an unprecedented
expedient, turned off to the country of the Muscogees. These Indians,
always more or less inimical to the colonists, bloodthirsty, cruel,
crafty, and but recently involved in a furious war against the
Cherokees, were glad to thwart Colannah in any cherished scheme of
revenge, and received the fugitive kindly. Although but for this fact
his temerity in venturing among them would have cost him his life, they
ministered to his needs with great hospitality, and forwarded him on his
way to Charlestown, sending a strong guard with him as far as Long Cane
settlement, a little above Ninety-Six.

Wyejah also made his escape. Appalled by the calamity of the accidental
blow, he "took sanctuary." In the supreme moment of excitement he flung
himself into the Tennessee River, and while eagerly sought by the
emissaries of Colannah in the woods, he swam to Chote, "beloved town,"
the city of refuge of the whole Cherokee nation, where the shedder of
blood was exempt from vengeance. As years went by, however, either
because of the death of Colannah, or because time had so far softened
the bereavement of the friends of Otasite that they were prevailed upon
to accept the "satisfaction," the presents required even from an in
voluntary homicide, he was evidently freed from the restricted limits of
the "ever-sacred soil," for his name is recorded in the list of warriors
who went to Charlestown in 1759 to confer with Governor Lyttleton on the
distracted state of the frontier, and being held as one of the hostages
of that unlucky embassy, he perished in the massacre of the Cherokees by
the garrison of Fort Prince George, after the treacherous murder of the
commandant, Captain Coytmore, by a ruse of the Indian king, Oconostota.

Abram Varney never ventured back among "the Nation," as he called the
Cherokees, as if they were the only nation on the earth. Now and again
in their frequent conferences with the Governor at Charlestown, rendered
necessary by their ever-recurrent friction with the British government,
he sought out members of the delegation for some news of his old
friends, his old haunts. Not one of them would take his hand; not one
would hear his voice; they looked beyond him, through him, as if he were
the impalpable atmosphere, as if he did not exist.

It was a little thing,--the displeasure of such men-