Middle
town-. I.', in all. with all their granaries and cornfields, driven the
inhabitants into the mountain-, and "pushed the frontier seventy
miles farther to the west."
y 1 ^ The Cherokee were now reduced to the greatest extremity. With
some of their best towns in ashes, their fields and orchards wasted for
two successive years, their ammunition nearly exhausted, many of
their bravest warriors dead, their people fugitives in the mountains,
hiding in caves and living like beasts upon roots or killing their
horses for food, with the terrible scourge of smallpox adding to the
mi-eric- of starvation, and withal torn by factional differences which
had existed from the very beginning of the war ii wa- impossible
for even brave men to resist longer. In September Ata-kullakulla,
who had all alone- done everything in his power to stay the disaffec-
tion,came down to Charleston, a treaty of peace was made, and the
i Catawba reference from Milligan, 171;:;, in Carroll, South Carolina Historical Collections, 11, p.
519
M....NKV] AUGUSTA TREATY ADVANCE OF SETTLEMENTS 45
war was ended. From an estimated population of at least 5,000 war-
riors some years before, the Cherokee had now been reduced to about
2,300 men. 1
In the meantime a force of Virginians under Colonel Stephen had
advanced as far as the Great island of the Holston -now Klingsport,
Tennessee — where they were met by a large delegation of Cherokee,
who sued for peace, which was concluded with them by Colonel
Stephen on November 19, 1761, independently of what was being done
in South Carolina. On the urgent request of the chief that an officer
might visit their people for a short time to cement