uld have a safeguard, the Indian
declared he would then go and catch a horse for him; so saying, he swung
a bridle twice over his head, as a signal; and immediately twenty-five
or thirty muskets, from different ambuscades, were discharged at the
English officers. Mr. Cotymore received a shot in his left breast, and
in a few days expired: Mr. Bell was wounded in the calf of the left leg,
and the interpreter in the buttock. Ensign Milne, who remained in the
fort, was no sooner informed of this treachery, than he ordered the
soldiers to shackle the hostages; in the execution of which order one
man was killed on the spot, and another wounded in his forehead with a
tomahawk; circumstances which, added to the murder of the lieutenant,
incensed the garrison to such a degree, that it was judged absolutely
necessary to put the hostages to death without further hesitation.
In the evening a party of Indians approached the fort, and firing two
signal pieces, cried aloud in the Cherokee language--"Fight manfully,
and you shall be assisted." They then began an attack; and continued
firing all night upon the fort, without doing the least execution. That
a design was concerted between them and the hostages appeared plainly
from the nature of the assault; and this suspicion was converted into a
certainty next day, when some of the garrison, searching the apartment
in which the hostages lay, found a bottle of poison, probably designed
to be emptied into the well, and several tomahawks buried in the earth;
which weapons had been privately conveyed to them by their friends, who
were permitted to visit them without interruption. On the third day
of March, the fort of Ninety-six was attacked by two hundred Cherokee
Indians with musketry, which had little or no effect; so that they were
forced to retire with some loss, and revenged themselves on the open
country, burning and ravaging all the houses and plantations belonging
to English settlers in this part of the country, and all along the
frontiers of Virginia. Not contented with pillaging and destroying the
habitations, they wantoned in the most horrible barbarities; and their
motions were so secret and sudden, that it was impossible for the
inhabitants to know where the storm would burst, or take proper
precautions for their own defence; so that a great number of the back
settlements were totally abandoned.]

[Footnote 550: Note 4 M, p. 550. The garrison of Quebec, during the
winter, rep