King's Mountain (2 page)

But when has reason ever triumphed over suffering?

*   *   *

At least we had been warned. We always knew there was danger, of course. On the Carolina frontier, it was never far away. In mid-July, a few days before the siege began, I had been down on Stoney Creek, directing the building of a new log fort that I would command, being the ranking elected officer of our local militia. Then in case of an Indian attack, those who lived on the nearby farms would have a fortified place of refuge. We were still a good ways from finishing construction when someone shouted that a rider was approaching, and we saw the trader Isaac Thomas, bareback on a jugheaded Cherokee horse and gaunt as a scarecrow, calling out to us. The men dropped tools and hastened to meet him, shouting joyfully and pulling Thomas down from the horse, for he had been captured weeks ago, and we never thought to see him again. All summer there had been unrest among the Cherokee, and we had lost several of our number to their raiding parties. Besides Thomas, two other men from these parts had been taken, and—the greatest cause of concern around the settlement—the wife of William Bean was taken as she was riding from their cabin on Boone Creek to Fort Watauga for safety. I hoped for news of all of them, but especially of her, for she left behind a grieving husband and a young child.

I set the mallet down next to the rifle that was never far from my hand, and went out to welcome him. Thomas was dirty and sweat-soaked from his hard ride, but he had no apparent wounds, and I was thankful to see him thus—in one piece with his scalp still attached.

I clapped him on the back, and led him to a fallen log by the river, where I had set a jug of cider and a hunk of bread and cheese for my lunch. “You look like a starving hound, Thomas, but I see that you managed to escape them.”

He did not smile. “It was made to look that way, Mr. Sevier. But I had help.
The Ghighau
, Mistress Ward, got some of her clan to spirit us out and give us horses to speed us on our way. She wanted me to carry a message to the settlements up here.”

Suddenly I felt cold in the sunshine. “When is it to be then?”

He nodded. “The attack? Very soon. As the tribe's Beloved Woman, Nancy Ward sits on the council, you know, and she may speak when they are making their plans. No doubt she is very wise, but the other council members do not often heed her words. She warns that Old Abram and her kinsman Dragging Canoe are leading war parties. They want us out of here, of course. Thanks to the meddling of the king's army, they are no longer willing to honor the land purchases we made, and, if we won't go back east willingly, they mean to drive us out or kill us where we stand.”

I believed him—or rather I believed Nancy Ward, for I had met her, and found her to be both truthful and wise. The honor of being the Cherokee Ghighau is usually given to an old woman, but Nancy Ward had become the Ghighau when she was still a young girl. She had married a young warrior named Kingfisher, and when the warriors went south to fight the Creek nation, she went with him. They said she stayed by his side during the fighting, helping him reload his weapon, and chewing the bullets for his gun. When he fell in battle, the stricken young wife was so overcome with grief and rage that she snatched up her dead husband's weapon, and led the surviving warriors in a charge against the enemy. This brave or foolhardy gesture turned the tide of the battle, and when the war party went home victorious, they declared the widowed girl their “Beloved Woman,”
Ghighau,
adviser to the council of chiefs, and so she had been ever since. In later years, when the whites came into Indian territory, Nancy Ward married the trader Bryan Ward, and though their union did not last, she had borne him children, and she knew more of our ways than the rest of her people. They would have done well to listen to her.

Nancy Ward would not have arranged for Isaac Thomas to escape unless she knew the attack to be a certainty.

I nodded. What Thomas said was no more than common currency among our neighbors. The British had given guns to the tribes along the frontier, and encouraged them to attack the frontier forts. For one thing, that would keep our minds off rebellion against the king. “But Nancy Ward saw to it that you escaped. I'll wager she thinks that some of us might survive their attacks, and that if we do, our vengeance against the Cherokee will be terrible. She is wise.”

“Yes, sir. And she doesn't trust the British any more than we do. She particularly told me to ask you to spare the Hiwassee towns should the circumstances arise.”

In her place, I would have requested the same, but I knew that it might not be within my power to accommodate her. I was a respected landowner, and in the process of building the fort I would command for the settlement here on the Nolichucky, but Colonel Carter and Captain Robertson over at the Watauga fort outranked me in the local militia, and they might have other ideas.

“What of the other prisoners?” I asked Thomas. “Did you see any of them?”

“Yes, sir. Mistress Lydia Bean was a captive in the village where I was kept. Two other white men were tortured to death, and Mrs. Bean was to be next. They tied her to a stake in the center of the huts, and set the tinder alight, but before the fire could take hold, the Ghighau marched out of her hut, walked straight up to the flames, and stomped them out. Then she delivered what sounded like a tongue lashing to those in charge of the burning. I reckon it sickened her to see Cherokee warriors tormenting a defenseless woman who had done them no harm. Then she pointed to the ropes binding Mistress Bean, and some of the men cut her loose. Then the Ghighau herself took Lydia Bean back to her own cabin, and that's the last I saw of her.”

“Is she yet alive?”

“From what I could tell, they don't mean to kill her. The Ghighau won't allow it. She has set Mistress Bean to teaching the village womenfolk how to make cheese and butter. I reckon they'll let her go sooner or later if she doesn't cross them. But she wasn't allowed to come with me. I was only set free in order to deliver the message that an attack was coming.”

“The Ghighau cannot stop the raids, more's the pity. Though she holds the swan's wing, and she sits with the chief at their council, she has only the power to advise. Still, she must know that, win or lose, this war will be the ruin of her people. There are too many of us out here now. Even if the Cherokee killed us all, more settlers would come. She is right—peace is their only hope of surviving, for we will wipe them out if we have to in order to protect our land. But I can see that it would be difficult for her to convince warriors of that. So they mean to attack despite her counsel to keep peace?”

“They do. I don't know when—perhaps a week or so—but, as sure as I stand before you, it is coming.”

*   *   *

I was grateful that we had been warned, but I wished we had more time to finish the work on the new fort.

“Well, our concern now is to warn the others,” I told Isaac Thomas. “Water your mount now, while I go and write a note for you to take to the other forts. Carter and Robertson can send word to the neighboring farms, as we will here.”

Isaac Thomas looked past me at the framework of the unfinished fort, and I could see that he was thinking that we might as well hide under a blanket for all the protection it would offer. “Will you stay here, sir?”

“Yes, if I can. If we leave it, Old Abram will burn it to the ground, and it would be a pity to see a whole summer's work go to waste.”

*   *   *

But we had to abandon it anyway. When I warned those on the nearby farms that a Cherokee war party was coming, there was great consternation among the neighbors. They had wives and children to think of, and livestock that they would not risk if they could help it. Without delay they packed up what they could carry, herded what cattle they could manage, and fled north to the nearest refuge: James Robertson's post at Fort Watauga. We sorely needed a fort closer to our homes, for if the Cherokee attacked, we risked being cut down on our way to the more distant fort erected by James Robertson's men, on the shoals of the Watauga. That fort was large enough to hold a hundred souls or more—if they could survive to get there. The other workers sent their women and children on ahead to the Watauga fort, accompanied by what men we could spare to protect them on the journey. Soon there were fewer than a dozen of us left to carry on with the construction. I saw that we would never finish it in time, and I could not in good conscience risk the men's lives and families in a vain attempt to continue the work.

I held out as long as I could, but one night over supper when I was holding forth about those men who had left the work to retreat to Fort Watauga, my wife, Sarah, said, “Is it the fort's construction you mind about, John, or is it the fact that you were to be in command of it?”

I could not answer her.

“I know you want to finish it, but there are lives besides yours at risk here. Your brothers Robert, Joseph, and Valentine, and their families. Our own Joseph, and the little ones. It is too much of a gamble to stake all their lives on the chance that you will finish the fort in time.”

She was right, though I did not like to admit it. Finally, though, I faced the fact that a swift completion of the fort was past praying for, called a halt to the construction, and said that we would join the others at the fort on the Watauga.

I had been distracted by the need to get our fort constructed and ready, but as Sarah had reminded me, I had others to think of myself—my wife and our eight children, and Richard our youngest, who was still a babe in arms. For their safety, Sarah and I thought we had best gather up our brood, and join my brothers and their families and the remaining neighbors in the flight to Robertson's fort while there was still time.

It would be close quarters, for the fort was not designed to hold so many, but perhaps it was for the best that we should all be gathered there, for then we would have all our militia officers—Captain James Robertson, Colonel John Carter, and myself, a lieutenant—along with seventy-five armed men to defend the settlement, perhaps two hundred souls in all. We would not be comfortable, herded together like penned cattle, livestock and all, but we were used to hardships.

*   *   *

At least we were fortunate that it was high summer, so that there were provisions enough for all of us. The men ventured out to hunt, or to slaughter one of the hogs driven to the fort from the farms. The women prepared trenchers full of stews, cornmeal puddings, and beans, and such dishes as they could concoct from the plants nearby. It might have seemed very jolly to have all our friends and kinsman gathered for a long party, but only the younger children thought it a holiday. Our thoughts lay elsewhere. We kept sentries posted at every moment, watching the forests and the riverbank, waiting for the attack that we knew would come. I think the waiting was harder than the fighting itself when it came.

We had not long to wait, though. Near daybreak on the twentieth of July the Indians launched the first attack. Old Abram's warriors stormed the wooden walls of our little fort, and we managed to drive them back with volleys of musket fire, but our safety was dearly bought, for we lost a good many brave and honest men in that skirmish.

Even the women were drawn into the fighting, fierce as it was. At one point, while we were distracted by the gunfire, several of the Cherokee attempted to build a fire at the base of the log wall. The man who saw it stopped shooting long enough to kneel down on the parapet and shout down a warning to those milling about below. Some of the men began firing down at the Indians with the firebrands at the base of the wall, but they were protected by covering fire from their comrades hidden in the woods close by.

Within the fort, some of the women had been grouped around the big kettle, doing the washing. When they heard the warning shout—attackers trying to burn the fort—one of them responded at once. This was Ann Johnston, the sister of Captain Robertson. Married young and widowed at twenty-one, Mistress Ann had brought her three little daughters to the fort, and she had proved as much of a leader among the ladies as was her brother with the militia.

When the cry of “Fire” went up, Ann Johnston snatched up a wooden pail and dipped it into the boiling wash water. She carried the bucket to the side of the fort where the men were shooting at the marauders, and called to the women nearest her to help her scale the wall to the parapet. Once she gained her footing on the walkway near the top of the wall, she pushed her way past the marksmen, hoisted the bucket to the top of the palisades, and poured boiling water on the warriors below. By then the women had filled another bucket, and passed it up to her, so that she could do it again.

The scalded Indians soon abandoned their efforts and ran for the woods, but not before the Widow Johnston herself was wounded in the hail of arrows and shot flying past her. She did her part, though, in saving the fort, and she set an example for courage that helped all of us face the prospect of the long siege to come.

After that, all was quiet for hours, though we kept a full strength of sentries up on the parapet, watching in every direction, and the women kept that kettle boiling until nightfall.

The Indians did not come back, though. The next day dawned and the one after that, without a sign that there was anything out in the woods except wild turkeys and squirrels.

“They mean to starve us out,” James Robertson told me as we took our turn on guard duty one evening. “They have all the forest to hunt in, and the whole of the river for water, while we sit here elbow to elbow within these walls. Our provisions won't last forever, and they know it.”

I was watching the dark forest, but there was no movement there, no sign that we were not alone. “What choice have we? We can't go out and attack them in force. They would slip away before we got a hundred paces from the gates, only to come back in their own time. We must wait for them to attack again.”