Under Greene's orders he turned south to the
Santee to assist a fellow scion of the Huguenots, General Francis
Marion, in the pursuit of Stuart's Britishers. Having driven
Stuart into Charleston, Sevier and his active Wataugans returned
home, now perhaps looking forward to a rest, which they had
surely earned. Once more, however, they were hailed with alarming
news. Dragging Canoe had come to life again and was emerging from
the caves of the Tennessee with a substantial force of
Chickamaugan warriors. Again the Wataugans, augmented by a
detachment from Sullivan County, galloped forth, met the red
warriors, chastised them heavily, put them to rout, burned their
dwellings and provender, and drove them back into their hiding
places. For some time after this, the Indians dipped not into the
black paint pots of war but were content to streak their humbled
countenances with the vermilion of beauty and innocence.
It should be chronicled that Sevier, assisted possibly by other
Wataugans, eventually returned to the State of North Carolina the
money which he had forcibly borrowed to finance the King's
Mountain expedition; and that neither he nor Shelby received any
pay for their services, nor asked it. Before Shelby left the
Holston in 1782 and moved to Kentucky, of which State he was to
become the first Governor, the Assembly of North Carolina passed
a resolution of gratitude to the overmountain men in general, and
to Sevier and Shelby in particular, for their "very generous and
patriotic services" with which the "General Assembly of this
State are feelingly impressed.
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