was with Rutherford, and
Cherokee informant.-.
(18) Colonel William Christian (p. 50): Colonel William Christian, some-
206 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [bth.ask.19
Unit's incorrectly called Christy, was born in Berkeley county, Virginia, in 1732.
Accustomed to frontier warfare almost from boyhood, he served in the French and
Indian war with the rank of captain, and was afterward in command of the Ten-
nessee and North Carolina forces which participated in the great battle of Point
Pleasant in 1774, although he himself arrived too late for the fight. He organized
a regiment at the opening of the Revolutionary war, and in 1776 led an expedition
from Virginia against the Upper Cherokee and compelled them to sue fur peace.
In 1782, while upon an expedition against the Ohio tribes, he was captured and
burned at the stake.
( 19) The pBEAT Indian warpath ( p. 50): This noted Indian thoroughfare from
Virginia through Kentucky and Tennessee to the Creek country in Alabama and
Georgia is frequently mentioned in the early narrative of that section, and is indi-
cated on the maps accompanying Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee and Royce's Chero-
kee Nation, in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Royce's map
shows it in more correct detail. It was the great trading and war path between the
northern and southern tribes, and along the same path Christian, Sevier, and others
of the old Indian fighters led their men to the destruction of the towns on Little
Tennessee, Hiwassee, and southward.
According to Ramsey (p. 88), one branch of it ran nearly on the. line of the
later Btage road from Harpers ferry to Knoxville, passing the Big lick