g surrounded. Extending
their own line under the direction of Captain James Shelby, the
frontiersmen steadily met the bold attack of the Indians, who,
mistaking the rapid extension of the line for a movement to
retreat, incautiously made a headlong onslaught upon the whites,
giving the war-whoop and shouting: "The Unakas are running!" In
the ensuing hot conflict at close quarters, in some places hand
to hand, the Indians were utterly routed--The Dragging Canoe
being shot down, many warriors wounded, and thirteen left dead
upon the field.

On the day after Thompson, Cocke, Shelby, Campbell, Madison, and
their men were thus winning the battle of the Long Island
"flats," Robertson, Sevier, and their little band of forty-two
men were engaged in repelling an attack, begun at sunrise, upon
the Watauga fort near the Sycamore Shoals. This attack, which was
led by Old Abraham, proved abortive; but as the result of the
loose investment of the log fortress, maintained by the Indians
for several weeks, a few rash venturers from the fort were killed
or captured, notably a young boy who was carried to one of the
Indian towns and burned at the stake, and the wife of the pioneer
settler, William Been, who was rescued from a like fate by the
intercession of the humane and noble Nancy Ward. It was during
this siege, according to constant tradition, that a frontier
lass, active and graceful as a young doe, was pursued to the very
stockade by the fleet-footed savages. Seeing her plight, an
athletic young officer mounted the stockade at a single leap,
shot down the foremost of the pursuers, and leaning over, seized
the maiden by the hands and lifted her over the stockade. The
maiden who sank breathless into the arms of the young officer,
John Sevier, was "Bonnie Kate Sherrill"--who, after the fashion
of true romance, afterward became the wife of her gallant
rescuer.

While the Tennessee settlements were undergoing the trials of
siege and attack, the settlers on the frontiers of Rowan were
falling beneath the tomahawk of the merciless savage. In the
first and second weeks of July large forces of Indians penetrated
to the outlying settlements; and in two days thirty-seven persons
were killed along the Catawba River. On July 13th, the bluff old
soldier of Rowan, General Griffith Rutherford, reported to the
council of North Carolina that "three of our Captains are killed
and one wounded"; and that he was setting out that day with what
men