prevent an alliance of the Cherokee, Creeks, and other south-
ern Indians with the confederated hostile northern tribes, the govern-
ment had endeavored to persuade the former to furnish a contingent
of warriors to act with the army against the northern Indians, and
special instruction had been given to Shaw to use his efforts for this
result. Nothing, however, came of the attempt. St Clair's defeat
turned the scale against the United States, and in September, 1792,
the Chickamauga towns formally declared war. 1
In November of this year the governor of Georgia officially reported
that a party of lawless Georgians had gone into the Cherokee Nation,
and had there burned a town and barbarously killed three Indians,
while about the same time two other Cherokee had been killed within
the settlements. Fearing retaliation, he ordered out a patrol ofbody of Creeks was on it- way against the Cum-
berland settlements, and that the ( 'reck chief. Met rillivray, was trying
to form a general confederacy of all the Indian tribes against the
whites. To understand this properly it must lie remembered that at
this time all the tribes northwest of the Ohio and as far as the heads
of the Mississippi were banded together in a grand alliance, headed
l>\ the warlike Shawano, for the purpose of holding the Ohio river as
the Indian boundary against the advancing tide of white settlement.
They had just cut to pieces one of the finest armies ever sent into the
West, under the veteran General St Clair (28), and it seemed for the
moment a- if the American advance would he driven hack behind the
Alleghenies.
In the emergency the Secretary