terminated with the evacuation of Fort DeQuesne by the French in 1758.
In the campaign against Fort DuQuesne great effort was made to engage the Cherokees in the British interest; Washington thought their presence indispensably necessary. Many of them were engaged. Among others, a chief whom Washington calls Antasity,11 undoubtedly meant for Outacite (the mankiller), of Tomotley, known on the border as Judge Friend. At the close of the Cherokee war in 1762 Outacite went to England with Henry Timberlake, where he created a great furore, was visited by thousands of people, had an audience with the king, and received many presents; among others one from Oliver Goldsmith, which, either from its appropriateness or the manner of its giving, so excited his gratitude that he embraced the great poet, and incidentally smeared his face with oil and red ochre.12 Another chief with Washington was the great warrior, Scollacutta (Hanging Maw), afterwards head chief or the nation and a man of peace.13 Ranking both of these was Attakullakulla (Little Carpenter), of Tuskegee, who was then in the zenith of his power.14
On Washington’s recommendation, Captain Christopher Gist was put in charge of the Indian affairs of the army. Nathaniel Gist, who had been elevated to the rank of lieutenant, entered the department of service of which his father had charge, and commanded a detachment of Indian auxiliaries. This was the beginning of the long and intimate friendship that subsisted between him and the Cherokee Indians.
After the fall of Fort DuQuesne, Nathaniel Gist returned to his old haunts and friends on the Yadkin River; and there is little reason to doubt that he found an early opportunity to visit his new friends on the Little Tennessee. Indeed it seems certain that he had visited the Long Island of Holston before 1760. There are few places in Tennessee around which cluster so much of early romance as is wreathed about the Long Island of Holston. It was opposite this Island that Colonel William Byrd erected Fort Robinson in 1758, which he was still occupying when Fort Loudon fell in 1760. Fort Robinson was rebuilt in 1776 under the name of Fort Patrick Henry; from which in 1779, Colonel John Donelson embarked on his perilous voyage down the Tennessee and up the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers to Nashville, freighted with the mothers of Middle Tennessee. The first pitched battle with the Cherokees in 1776, was fought at Long Island Flats; and there the Virginia and North Carolina forces under Colonel William Christian, assembled for their first expedition against the Overhill towns. Long Island was a favorite treaty ground of the Cherokees; there they held their first treaty with the States of Virginia and North Carolina in 1777, and their second in 1781. On account of its sanctity as a treaty ground the legislature of North Carolina excluded it from the operation of the act of 1783 which assumed to appropriate the Indian lands by right of conquest; and the Cherokees continued to hold it until 1806.
There is a curious reservation in the treaty of 1777. The provision is in these words:
“Memorandum before signing: That the Tassel yesterday objected against giving up the Great Island, opposite Fort Henry, to any person or country, except Colonel Nathaniel Gist. for whom and themselves it was reserved by the Cherokees.
“The Raven did the same this day in behalf of the Indians, and desired that Colonel Gist might sit down upon it when he pleased, as it belonged to him and them to hold good talks on.”15
There is an interesting romance leading up to this extraordinary expression of friendship for Colonel Gist, the details of which are now lost; but we still have a few fragmentary facts that sufficiently indicate its character. After Colonel Gist returned from the West he abandoned himself to the life of a hunter and explorer. He was the companion and friend of Daniel Boone. They visited the Holston together in 1760; hunted down its south, or main fork; camped at Wolf Hills, where Abingdon, Va., now stands. Here they disagreed and separated, Boone taki