Day," the two cheera-taghe of the town mysteriously disappeared, and
their fate had remained a dark riddle.

One of these men, Oo-koo-koo, was well known in Charlestown. Both were
of influence in the tribe, but often he had been specially chosen as one
of the delegations of warriors and "beloved men" sent to wait in
diplomatic conference on the Governor of South Carolina, to complain of
injustice in the dealings of the licensed traders or the encroachments
of the frontier settlers, or to crave the extension of some privilege of
the treaty which the Cherokee tribe had lately made with the British
government.

Two white men, who had become conspicuous in a short stay in the town of
Nilaque Great, disappeared simultaneously, and the suspicion of foul
dealing on their part against the cheera-taghe, which the Cherokee
nation seemed disposed to entertain, threatened at one time the peace
that was so precious to the "infant settlements," as the small, remote,
stockaded stations of the Carolina frontiersmen were tenderly called.

Therefore the Governor of South Carolina, now a royal province,--the
event occurred during the incumbency of Robert Johnson, who having acted
in that capacity for the Lords Proprietors, well understood the menace
of the situation,--busied himself with extreme diligence to discover the
subsequent movements of the two white men, whose names were Terence
O'Kimmon and Adrien L'Epine, in order to ascertain the fate of the
cheera-taghe, and if evilly entreated, to bring the perpetrators of the
deed to justice.

With a long, unguarded, open frontier such as his province presented to
the incursions of the warlike and fierce Cherokees, who, despite their
depopulating wars with other tribes, could still bring to the field six
thousand braves from their sixty-four towns, the inhabitants of which
were estimated at twenty thousand souls, he was by no means disposed to
delay or to indulge doubts or to foster compatriot commiseration in
meting out the penalty of the malefactors. The united militia of South
Carolina and Georgia at this time numbered but thirty-five hundred rank
and file, these colonies being so destitute of white men for the common
defense that a memorial addressed to his majesty King George II. a
little earlier than this event, bearing date April 9, 1734, pathetically
states that "money itself cannot here raise a sufficient body of them."
The search for the suspects, however, although long, exhaus