t would certainly be impossible to
desire better proof than that thus furnished by this royal officer, both
of the ferocity of the British policy towards the frontiersmen, and of
the treachery of the Indians, who so richly deserved the fate that
afterwards befell them.

While waiting for the signal from Hamilton, Cameron organized two Indian
expeditions against the frontier, to aid the movements of the British
army that had already conquered Georgia. A great body of Creeks,
accompanied by the British commissaries and most of the white traders
(who were, of course, tories), set out in March to join the king's
forces at Savannah; but when they reached the frontier they scattered
out to plunder and ravage. A body of Americans fell on one of their
parties and crushed it; whereupon the rest returned home in a fright,
save about seventy, who went on and joined the British. At the same time
three hundred Chickamaugas, likewise led by the resident British
commissaries, started out against the Carolina frontier. But Robertson,
at Chota, received news of the march, and promptly sent warning to the
Holston settlements [Footnote: _Do_. "A rebel commissioner in Chote
being informed of their movements here sent express into Holston river."
This "rebel commissioner" was in all probability Robertson.]; and the
Holston men, both of Virginia and North Carolina, decided immediately to
send an expedition against the homes of the war party. This would not
only at once recall them from the frontier, but would give them a
salutary lesson.

Accordingly the backwoods levies gathered on Clinch River, at the mouth
of Big Creek, April 10th, and embarked in pirogues and canoes to descend
the Tennessee. There were several hundred of them [Footnote: State
Department MSS. No. 51, Vol. II., p. 17, a letter from the British
agents among the Creeks to Lord George Germaine, of July 12, 1779. It
says, "near 300 rebels"; Haywood, whose accounts are derived from oral
tradition, says one thousand. Cameron's letter of July 15th in the
Haldimand MSS. says seven hundred. Some of them were Virginians who had
been designed for Clark's assistance in his Illinois campaign, but who
were not sent him. Shelby made a very clever stroke, but it had no
permanent effect, and it is nonsense to couple it, as has been recently
done, with Clark's campaigns.] under the command of Evan Shelby; Isaac
Shelby having collected the supplies for the expedition by his
individual acti