Tennessee) and Virginia united to send a
strong force of volunteers against them under command of Colonels
Shelby and Montgomery. Descending the Holston in April in a fleet
of canoes built for tin 1 occasion, they took the Chickamauga towns so
completely by surprise that the few warriors remaining fled to the
mountains without attempting to give battle. Several were killed,
Chickamauga and the outlying villages were burned, twenty thousand
bushels of corn were destroyed and large numbers of horses and cattle
captured, together with a great quantity of goods sent by the British
Governor Hamilton at Detroit for distribution to the Indians. The
success of this expedition frustrated the execution of a project by
Hamilton for uniting all the northern and southern Indians, to lie
assisted by British regulars, in a concerted attack along the whole
American frontier. ( )nlearning, through runnel's, of the blow that
had befallen them, the Chickamauga warriors gave up all idea of
invading the settlements, and returned to their wasted villages. 1 They,
as well as the Creeks, however, kept in constant communication with
1 Hawkins, manuscript journal, 1796, with Georgia Historical Socii ty.
2 Ramsey, Tennessee, pp. 174-178, 1S53.
3 t'ampbell letter, 1782, Virginia State Papers, ill, p. 271, 1883.
< Ramsey, op. eit, pp. 186-188; Roosevelt. Winning of the West, II, pp. 236-238, 1889. Ramsey's state-
ments, chiefly on Haywood's authority, of the strength of the expedition, the number of warriors
killed, etc., are so evidently overdrawn that they are here omitted.
56 MYTHS ok THE CHEROKEE
the British commander in Savannah. In this year also a delegation of
Cherokee \ isited the Ohio towns to offer condolences on the death of
the