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Updated: June 23, 2025
The warriors have detained him till they can know the will of their father the Archimagus. The answer is brief: "Let him come. Oconostota will hear him." And now an hour goes by, during which these grave chiefs sit as silent and motionless as if keeping watch around a sepulchre.
Oconostota's heart was set upon the reduction of this stronghold, and so was that of all the Cherokee nation. And yet Atta-Kulla-Kulla could but perceive the flagrant futility of the expectation of the surrender of the garrison on the coercion that Oconostota had devised, especially as Fort Prince George was so much nearer than Fort Loudon to communication with the white settlements.
On the 17th of March, Oconostota and two other chiefs, the Raven and the Carpenter, signed the Treaty of the Sycamore Shoals, in the presence and with the assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe, half of them warriors; for all who could had come to the treaty grounds. Henderson thus obtained a grant of all the lands lying along and between the Kentucky and the Cumberland rivers.
And with the reminder of all these overpowering military splendors of his great enemy, Oconostota began to feel that he would be glad to secure possession of these few of King George's great guns uninjured, fit to bark, and, if occasion should offer, to bite. From that point the negotiation took a stable footing.
A like fate was determined upon for good Mrs. Bean, the kindly woman whose hospitable door had ever been open to all, white man or Indian. Oconostota would not have her die; but Dragging-Canoe insisted that she should be offered up as a sacrifice to the manes of his fallen warriors; and the head-king was not powerful enough to prevent it.
In the stress of the noisy moment, when the corpses had been carried off and the howling women and their friends had followed them to their assigned homes in the barracks, several braves, including Oconostota himself, had become aware of Stuart's return and gathered around him.
The massacre had swept away most of the cannoneers, and Stuart was aware that the infantrymen left of the garrison would be hardly more capable of dealing with the problems of gun service than was Oconostota, their careless and casual observation being worth little more than his earnest, but dense ignorance.
He stepped in front of Runner and in a low ugly voice said: "You fellows quit this talk. 'Nough mischief has been done. Unless Oconostota can be smoothed down there'll be trouble from Rye Cove to Tygart's Valley. As for following t'other two, you'll reckon with me and my neighbors first."
This last force was to be divided into two bodies of three hundred and fifty each, one of which, under Oconostota, was to attack Fort Watauga; the other, under Dragging-Canoe, head-chief of the Chickamaugas, was to attempt the capture of Fort Patrick Henry, which they supposed to be still defended by only about seventy men.
And suddenly came the Carolina Colonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been to Charlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter was Oconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had just signed a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest any Frenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation.
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