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During the sporadic forays by scattered bands of Northern Indians upon the Catawbas and other tribes friendly to the pioneers the isolated settlements at the back part of the Carolinas suffered rude and sanguinary onslaughts.
The Cherokees and Catawbas, whom Dinwiddie had given him reason to expect in such numbers, never arrived. George Croghan reached the camp with but about fifty warriors, whom he had brought from Aughquick. At the general's request he sent a messenger to invite the Delawares and Shawnees from the Ohio, who returned with two chiefs of the former tribe.
Shawnese Indians had formerly lived on the Cumberland river, and French traders had been among them, as well as along the Mississippi; but by the time of the English traders, Tennessee and Kentucky were for the most part uninhabited. The Virginia traders reached the Catawbas, and for a time the Cherokees, by a trading route through the southwest of the colony to the Santee.
'Tis some dodge-hole hollowed out by the Catawbas long ago and shared since by them and the bears, judging from the stinking reek of it. Uncanoola steered me hither the night of the raid." "Then the chief came off safely?" I said, falling into a dumb and impotent rage that the saying of two words should scant me so of strength to say a third. "Right as a trivet scalps and all," laughed Jennifer.
Although for several decades the Virginia traders had been passing over the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokees and the Catawbas, it was not until the early years of the eighteenth century that Virginians of imaginative vision directed their eyes to the westward, intent upon crossing the mountains and locating settlements as a firm barrier against the imperialistic designs of France.
King Heygler, following the lead set by the Cherokees, petitioned the Governor of North Carolina to send the Catawbas some ammunition and to "build us a fort for securing our old men, women and children when we turn out to fight the Enemy on their coming."
The aid of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to the utmost the patience of the commanders.
In the spring and summer of 1758 the long expected Indian allies arrived in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May Cherokees, Catawbas, Tuscaroras, and Nottaways.
In response to this request, the sum of four thousand pounds was appropriated by the North Carolina Assembly for the erection of "a Fort on our western frontier to protect and secure the Catawbas" and for the support of two companies of fifty men each to garrison this and another fort building on the sea coast.
They fought successfully with the Catawbas, Cowetas, and the Cherokees, and thought to exterminate by one decisive blow, all of the white inhabitants within their borders. Mr. Schoolcraft prefers, and quite justly the name Iroquois, as descriptive of this confederacy, instead of Six Nations, since the term is well known, and applicable to them in every part of their history.
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