It was therefore ordered that a force of at least
100 white men be at once senl against them, to be joined by the war-
riors of all the neighboring subject tribes, according to treaty obliga-
tion. The Pamunkey chief , with a hundred of his men. responded to
the summons, and the combined force marched againsl the invaders.
The result was a bloody battle, with disastrous outcome to the Vir-
ginians, the Pamunkey chief with most ,,f hi- men being killed, while
the whites were forced to make such terms of peace with the Recha-
hecrians that the assembly cashiered the commander of the expedition
and compelled him to pav the whole cost of the treatj from his own
estate. 1 Owing to the imperfection of the Virginia records we have
no means of knowing the causes >d'tin' sudden invasion or how long
the invaders retained their position at the falls. In all probability it
was only the last of a long series of otherwise unrecorded irruptions
by the mountaineers on the more peaceful dwellers in the lowlands.
From a remark in Ledererit is probable that the Cherokee were assisted
also by some of the piedmont tribes hostile to the Powhatan. The
Peaks of Otter, near which the Cherokee claim to have once lived, as
has been already noted, are only about one hundred miles in a straight
line from Richmond, while the burial mound and town site near
Charlottesville, mentioned by Jefferson, are but half that distance.
In L655 a Virginia expedition sent out from the falls of James river
(Richmond) crossed over the mountains to the large streams flowing
into the Mississippi. No details are