"
Thus was heralded the beginning of a savage warfare which kept
the borderers engaged for years.
It has been a tradition of the chroniclers that Isaac Thomas
received a timely warning from Nancy Ward, a half-caste Cherokee
prophetess who often showed her good will towards the whites; and
that the Indians were roused to battle by Alexander Cameron and
John Stuart, the British agents or superintendents among the
overhill tribes. There was a letter bearing Cameron's name
stating that fifteen hundred savages from the Cherokee and
Creek nations were to join with British troops landed at
Pensacola in an expedition against the southern frontier
colonies. This letter was brought to Watauga at dead of night by
a masked man who slipped it through a window and rode away.
Apparently John Sevier did not believe the military information
contained in the mysterious missive, for he communicated nothing
of it to the Virginia Committee. In recent years the facts have
come to light. This mysterious letter and others of a similar
tenor bearing forged signatures are cited in a report by the
British Agent, John Stuart, to his Government. It appears that
such inflammatory missives had been industriously scattered
through the back settlements of both Carolinas. There are also
letters from Stuart to Lord Dartmouth, dated a year earlier,
urging that something be done immediately to counteract rumors
set afloat that the British were endeavoring to instigate both
the Indians and the negroes to attack the Americans.
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