final issue. The Cherokees needed
time for preparation, and the Governor, with an army ill disciplined and
imperfectly armed, found it politic, when on the very confines of
the enemy's country, to do that which he might very well have done
in Charleston--listen to terms of accommodation. Having sent for
Attakullakullah, the wise man of the nation, who had always been the
staunch friend of the whites, he made his complaints, and declared his
readiness for peace;--demanding, however, as the only condition on
which it could be granted, that twenty-four men of the nation should be
delivered to him, to be disposed of as he should think proper, by death
or otherwise, as an atonement for that number of Carolinians, massacred
in the late foray of the savages. A treaty was effected, but with some
difficulty, on these terms. Compliance with this requisition was not
so easy, however, on the part of the Cherokee chiefs. The moment it was
understood, the great body of their people fled to the mountains,
and the number of hostages could be secured only by the detention
of twenty-two of those chiefs already in the Governor's custody. The
captives were placed, for safe keeping, at the frontier fort of Prince
George.

* Judge James' Life of Marion, p. 17.--

But the natural sense of the savage is not inferior to that by which
the laws of the civilized are prescribed, in their dealings with one
another. The treaty thus extorted from their leaders, while in a state
of duress, was disregarded by the great body of the nation. They watched
their opportunity, and, scarcely had the Governor disbanded his forces,
when the war-whoop resounded from the frontiers.

Fort Prince George was one of the most remote of a chain of military
posts by which the intercourse was maintained between the several white
settlements of the seaboard and the interior. It stood on the banks of
the Isundiga River, about three hundred miles from Charleston, within
gunshot of the Indian town of Keowee. This post, to which the Cherokee
hostages were carried, was defended by cannon, and maintained by a small
force under Colonel Cotymore. It was in this neighborhood, and, as it
were in defiance of this force, that the war was begun. Fourteen whites
were massacred at a blow, within a mile of this station. This was
followed up by a stratagem, by which Occonostota, one of the principal
warriors, aimed to obtain possession of the fort. Pretending to have
something of i