destroyed in turn, the corn
cut down or trampled under the hoofs of the stock driven into the
fields for that purpose, and the stock itself killed or carried off. Before
such an overwhelming force, supplemented as it was by three others
simultaneously advancing from other directions, the Cherokee made
but poor resistance, and tied with their women and children into the
fastnesses of the Great Smoky mountains, leaving their desolated fields
and smoking towns behind them. As was usual in Indian wars, the
actual number killed or taken was small, but the destruction of pro-
perty was beyond calculation. At Sugartown (Kulsetsi'yi, east of the
present Franklin) one detachment, sent to destroy it. was surprised,
and escaped only through the aid of another force sent to its rescue.
Rutherford himself, while proceeding to the destruction of the Hiwas-
see towns,encountered the Indians drawn up to oppose his progress in
the Wayagap of the Nantahala mountains, and one of the hardest tights
of the campaign resulted, the soldiers losing over forty killed and
wounded, although the Cherokee were finally repulsed (17). One of
the Indians killed on this occasion was afterward discovered to be a
woman, painted and armed like a warrior. 1
On September M the South Carolina army, 1,860 strong, under
Colonel Andrew Williamson, and including a number of Catawba
Indians, effected a junction with Rutherford's forces on Hiwassee
river, near the present Murphy. North Carolina. It had been expected
that Williamson would join the northern army at Cowee, on the Little
Tennessee, when they would proceed together against the western
towns, but he had been delayed, and the work of destruction in that
direction was already completed, so