believing the visitation a penalty for violation of
the ancient ordinances, threw away their sacred paraphernalia as things
which had lost their protecting power. Hundreds of the warriors
committed suicide on beholding their frightful disfigurement. "So
shot themselves, others cut their throats, some stabbed themselves
with knives and others with sharp-pointed canes: many threw them-
sel\ es with sullen madness into the tire and there slowly expired, a- ii
they hail been utterly divested of the native power of feeling pain." 3
Another authority estimates their loss at a thousand warriors, partly
from smallpox and partly from rum brought in by the traders. 1
A 1 >■ nit the year L 740 a trading path for horsemen was marked out
by the Cherokee from the new settlement of Augusta, in Georgia, to
their towns on the headwaters of Savannah riverand thence on to the
west. This road, which went up the south side of the river, soon
became much frequented.* Previous to this time most of the trading
goods had been transported on the backs of Indians. In the same
year a party of Cherokee under the war chief Ka'lanu. •"The Raven,"
took part in Oglethorpe's expedition against the Spaniards of Saint
Augustine.
In L736 Christian Priber, said to be a Jesuit acting in the French
interest, had come among the ( iherokee, and. by the facility with which
he learned the language and adapted himself to the native dress and
'Hewat, S Ii Carolina and Georgia, n,pp.S-ll, L779; treat; documei ' 1730, North Carolina
Colonial Ri — Is, ru, pp. 128 L33 1886; lenkinson, Collection of Treaties, n, pp. 315-318; Drake, S.G..
Early History of Georgia: Cuming's Embassy;