Knox County TN Archives History - Books .....Indian Troubles - Chapter VI 1900
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Book Title: Standard History Of Knoxville

CHAPTER VI.

INDIAN TROUBLES.



Indian War Imminent—Conditions in the West—Indian Atrocities-Policy of Blount

and the National Government—Threatened Attack on Knoxville—Preparation of

Whites—Pioneer Character—Stephen Foster's Account of the Massacre at Cavet's

Station—Sevier's Successful Raid.



THE presence of regular troops and organized bodies of militia indicated the

tension of relations between Indians and settlers. The year 1793 was one of

excitement and constant anxiety. In 1792 there were ominous events and

influences. With the intelligence of St. Clair's defeat in the Northwest, the

dissatisfaction over the treaty of Holston, and the increasing thirst of young

braves for plunder, carnage, and prestige, the frequency of murders and

depredations became noted. The restraint imposed by the national government upon

the military organizations that guarded the frontier, to act only on the

defensive, and the toleration of the frontiersmen under great provocation served

to invite attack and molestation rather than to encourage peace and friendship.

Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Blount had been invited by the Cherokee

chiefs. Hanging Maw, John Watts, and others, to meet them in conference at

Coyatee, whither he repaired to be greeted with distinguished honors in the

presence of two thousand Indians and to be received with protestations and

manifestations of peace and good will, still the great scalp dance in the Lower

Cherokee towns, participated in by Cherokees. Creeks, and Shawnees, was a surer

prophecy of what was in store for the struggling settlements along the Holston

and Cumberland rivers. The successful intercepting of Capt. Samuel Handley and

his company of forty-two men near Crab Orchard by a party of these Indians, his

capture and the discomfiture of his men, gave renewed confidence in the plans of

extermination.



  With the immediate danger of a protracted and destructive Indian war there

came to the governor grave and delicate responsibilities. The young government

at Philadelphia was not yet secure in its domestic or foreign policy. Important

negotiations were pending, which if disturbed or thwarted meant untold detriment

and disaster to the South and West. It was yet in the minds of many an open

question whether the vast region of country drained by the Mississippi river

eastward should belong to Spain or the United States, or should become part of a

great southwestern empire. The free and unobstructed navigation of the

Mississippi was likewise an unsettled question of gravest concern to the

settlers. It required all the arts and refinements of diplomacy to forego the

commission of a blunder, which might prove fatal to the welfare of the young

nation trying her unpracticed hand upon an effete monarchy. The policy of Spain

was, after supplying the Indians with guns and ammunition, to incite them to

attacks upon the American settlements and thus to foment a war of extermination;

that of the United States was with rum and presents to cultivate the friendship

of the nations and thus to preserve intact all that territory ceded by the

treaty with Great Britain in 1/83, which included the domain inhabited

principally by the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws. A statement of

these facts is necessary to appreciate the causes of the Indian troubles which,

in the East, centered around Knoxville, but fell most heavily upon the

Cumberland settlements in Middle Tennessee. They serve also to explain, without

excusing it, the indifference of Congress to making a wise provision for the

defense of the Holston and Cumberland settlers against Indian forays.



  The increasing atrocities of Indian bands, emboldened by fortuitous

circumstances, brought the settlers to- the verge of despair. W7ith grim

determination they resolved to visit upon their foes death and destruction,

regarding neither age, sex nor faction. Governor Blount sent to the places of

their uprising or rendezvous Sevier or White or some other influential man of

the settlements, and for a time quelled the spirit of revenge and

insubordination. However, the killing of the friendly Chickasaw, John Morris,

while a guest at the governor's home in Knoxville, the invasion of John Beard

and his one hundred and forty followers, against orders, of the Upper Cherokee

towns, and the killing of Hanging Maw's wife and other kindly disposed Indians,

and Col. Doherty's invasion of the Indian country when ordered positively to

desist, show the utter desperation to which these men were goaded. The failure

of court-martial proceedings further testified to the common impulse by which

they were moved.*



*   Ramsey, 568.



  On the other hand, the government and Governor Blount were unceasing in their

efforts to placate the Indians and to preserve peace and friendship. Early in

the year the Secretary of War wrote to the governor urging him to visit the seat

of government with representative chiefs of the nation, promising an abundant

supply of such articles as they and their nation may require. + After repeated

urgings the governor failed to induce them to accompany him, and yet went on

with the hope of settling controversies and removing all uneasiness. In his own

home he entertained with lavish hospitality for eight or ten days Unacata, a

Cherokee chief, when at the end of this entertainment he came to the conclusion

that the chief had all the while acted the part of spy. When Morris was killed,

either by mistake for a Cherokee or through the wanton conduct of some

disorderly person, he caused him to be buried with military honors, walking with

the dead man's brother among the chief mourners, and later soothed the injured

feelings of the living by "pretty liberal presents."'# When the uprising at

Gamble's station took place, threatening instant invasion of the Indian country,

he dispatched Lieutenant Kelly, then Col. James Wrhite, to the scene to urge

acquiescence in the terms of the Holston treaty, and then betook himself to the

spot. The solicitude expressed in these words indicates the gravity of the

situation: "I can truly say, my feelings were never more agitated than they were

on this occasion. I considered my reputation as an officer, in great measure,

the reputation of the country over which I had the honor to preside, and my

prospects of returning peace, all at stake upon the event."*



+   American State Papers.    Indian Affairs. Vol. IV, 429.

#   American State Papers. 435.



  The most romantic episode in these troublous times was the threatened attack

of a combined force of Cherokees and Creeks, variously estimated from nine to

fifteen hundred warriors, on Knoxville in the fall of 1793. For a time after the

treaty of Holston, it will be recalled, there was a cessation of violent

outbreaks; but here and there sporadic assaults marked by an occasional murder

or some theft of horses showed that beneath the formality of peace lay the

smouldering embers of irreconcilable race hatred. Sufferings from Indian

cunning, treachery, vindictiveness, and atrocity had placed the settlers on

their guard. In the midst of apparent security, every means of defense was

employed to ward off sudden onslaughts and to guarantee personal safety. The

cabin was so constructed as to be impenetrable to shot from without, while

portholes commanding ail sides guarded the approaches. Scouts patroled the woods

to discover any lurking enemy; the workman in the field kept his rifle near at

hand to offer resistance if molested, and wives and daughters learned the arts

of war, becoming skilled in the moulding of bullets and the use of the rifle.

All, trained to be ready for any emergency, were inured to hardship and became

sharp-witted and keen-sighted in the hour of danger. Their readiness for combat,

their presence of mind in imminent peril, their endurance of privation, produced

a type of manhood and womanhood nowhere excelled in annals that extol

magnanimous souls and preserve courageous deeds. Whether it be James Cozby, to

protect his home besieged by twenty warriors, giving stentorian orders to an

imaginary platoon of soldiers and thus striking them with terror and thwarting

their purposes: or Margaret McEwen, when Houston's station is attacked by a band

of one hundred assailants, taking the bullet moulds and placing therein the

shapeless lead fired from Indian guns into the fort, remoulding it and bidding

her husband: "Here is a ball run out of the Indians' lead; send it back to them

as quick as possible. It is their own; let them have it in welcome:" or Mrs.

Gillespie when her defenseless home is entered and her sleeping infant marked

for slaughter, rushing to the door and shouting in pealing tones to her husband

and others as if hard by, "White men, come home! come home, white men! Indians!

Indians!" or Mrs. Campbell, when her husband and his helper, ploughing side by

side, are shot at by cowardly foe, taking down the rifle from the rack,

barricading the door, and waiting at the portholes to receive the ruthless

invader; or Andrew Cresswell and his wife, when their humble cottage is

threatened and retreat is possible, resolving that they will hold the house

until the Indians take them out; or Samuel Handley, when bound to the stake a

ready sacrifice to Indian ferocity defying his captors to shoot him as a brave

man deserves, and upbraiding them as merciless cowards;# or Mrs. George Mann,

when her husband has fallen a victim to the brutal instincts and malignant hate

of the foe, in defense of her home and little ones, sending a ball through the

body of the first Indian who forces an ingress and wounding another and thus

rescuing herself and household+ -these and multiplied examples like these attest

the material out of which heroic pioneer characters were made.



*American State Papers, 455.

#   American Historical Magazine, Vol. II, 88. 

+   Thomas W. Humes. Semi-Centennial Address. 56.



  The chief source of authority for an account of this attack is an essay of

Professor Stephen Foster, of East Tennessee college, read before the Knoxville

Lyceum and published in the Knoxville Register, September 21, 1831. Any history

of Knoxville is incomplete that does not recount this intended attack. Because

of its historic value and to give wider circulation to so noteworthy a

contribution to Knoxville history, the entire article is given.



MASSACRE AT CAVET'S STATION, SEPTEMBER 25TH.  1793.



  "On the road from Knoxville to Major Joseph Martin's is passed Joseph Lonas'

on the creek, the formerly celebrated Cavet's station. This Cavet's station was

nothing but the log-house dwelling of a family of thirteen persons in the days

of Indian havoc and bloodshed. It is eight miles below Knoxville and seven miles

above Campbell's station. This latter station was one of the chief forts of the

country, containing as many as twenty families, and assuming an air and attitude

of defense which inspired courage within itself, and extended to the savages

that prowled around it a salutary respect for the prowess of its interior.



  "In 1793 a party of Creeks and Cherokees, from 900 to 1,500, crossed the

Holston with the design of burning and sacking Knoxville. They halted upon the

question, 'Shall we massacre the whole town or only the men?' The Hanging Maw

was a leading man in the councils of his people. His opposition to the scheme of

an indiscriminate massacre was strenuous and weighty. Another circumstance is

here related. Van, Cherokee chief, possessed a little captive boy, that was

riding behind him. Doublehead became envious at this sight, and picked a quarrel

with Van, and to satiate his malice, killed the little boy with a sudden stab of

his knife. The animosity of these chiefs added hindrance to delay. And before

the plan of procedure could be satisfactorily adjusted, it was found to be too

late to arrive at Knoxville before daylight.



  "Then to avoid an entire failure of their enterprise, they repaired to

Cavet's, as affording the readiest and easiest prey. This establishment they

reduced to ashes. Its thirteen tenants were slaughtered except one. Cavet

himself was found butchered in the garden. Several bullets were still lying in

his mouth, having been put there by himself for the convenience of speedily

loading his gun. The day of this slaughter was the 25th of September.



  "In the meantime intelligence of the contemplated attack had arrived at

Knoxville, and given to the minds of its citizens that impulse which is only to

be looked for on great occasions, when the dignity of a single heroic conception

is enough to consecrate danger and death. The number of fighting men in

Knoxville was forty. But it was thought preferable to combine this force, and to

risk every life in a well-concerted effort to strike a deadly and terrific blow

on the advancing enemy, at the outskirts of the town rather than stand to be

hewed down in its center by the Indian tomahawk.



  "Gen. James White was then advanced a little beyond the prime of manhood, of a

muscular body, a vigorous constitution, and of that cool and determinate courage

which arises from a principle of original bravery, confirmed and ennobled by the

faith of the Bible. He was the projector and leader of the enterprise. Robert

Houston, Esq., from whose verbal statements the substance of much of this

narrative is copied, was of the age of twenty-eight, and was a personal actor in

the scene.



  "It was viewed to be manifest by those who were acquainted with Indian

movements, that the party would come up the back way near the present

plantations of Mrs. Luttrell and Henry Lonas, rather than the straighter way now

traveled by the stage. The company from Knoxville accordingly repaired to a

ridge, on that road, which now may be inspected about a mile and a quarter from

Knoxville. This ridge is marked by the irregular and shelving rocks of the road,

which passes over it.



  "On the side of this ridge next to Knoxville, our company was stationed at the

distance of twenty steps from each other, with orders to reserve their fire till

the most forward of the Indian party was advanced far enough to present a mark

for the most eastern man of our party. He was then to fire. This fire was to be

the signal to every man of our own to take aim with precision. This would be

favored by the halt thus occasioned in the ranks of the Indians. And these

latter, it was hoped, astonished at the sudden and fatal discharge of

thirty-eight rifles extended over so long a line, would apprehend a most

formidable ambuscade, and would quit all thought of further aggression, and

betake themselves to the readiest and safest retreat.



  "But to provide for the worst, it was settled beforehand that each man upon

discharging his piece, without stopping to watch the flight of the Indians,

should make the best of his way to Knoxville, lodge himself in the blockhouse

then standing at the present mansion of Mr. Etheldred Williams, where three

hundred muskets had been deposited by the United States, and where the two

oldest citizens of the forty, John McFarland and Robert Williams, were left

behind to run bullets and load.



  "Here it was proposed to make a last and desperate struggle; that, by

possessing every porthole in the building, and by dealing lead and powder

through it to the best advantage, they might extort from an enemy nearly forty

times their number, a high price for the hazard of all they had on earth that

was dear and precious. There were then two stores in Knoxville, Nathaniel

Cowan's and James Miller's.



  "Though the practical heroism of this well concerted and thus far ably

conducted strategem, in consequence of the sudden retreat of the enemy, was not

put to the test of actual experiment, yet an incident fraught with so much

magnanimity in the early fortunes of Knoxville should not be blotted from the

records of her fame. It is an incident on which the memory of her sons will

linger without tiring, when the din of party shall be hushed and its strife

forgotten. Those men of a former day were 'made of sterner stuff' than to shirk

from danger at the call of duty. And it will be left to the pen of a future

historian to do justice to that little band of thirty-eight citizens, who

flinched not from the deliberate exposure of their persons in the open field,

within the calculated gunshot of fifteen hundred of the fleetest running and

boldest savages.



  "This expedition on the part of the Indians, though in its issue abortive by

their divided councils, was marked with singular daring and despatch. They knew

that Col. Sevier with a detachment of four hundred mounted riflemen, ready to

ravage their territory, had recently left Knoxville and lay at that moment at

Ish's station on the south side of the river, about ten miles from Cavet's; that

a respectable force lay in garrison at Campbell's station, and that the

above-mentioned forty men were at Knoxville. Here then were three points from

which, at a moment's warning, they would be assailed from three different

directions at once. But they had formed their plan, that by a movement too quick

for discovery and by a ridge not commonly traveled by our warriors, they would

pass the forces at Ish's and Campbell's stations, seizing the favorable moment

of the absence of Sevier's troops, to fall upon Knoxville entirely unexpected,

scalp the inhabitants in their beds, pillage the only two little stores in the

place, and in the light of its blazing ruins, make off with their booty, divided

into two or three parties, to elude pursuit, prevent delay and make good their

escape.



  "The above-mentioned disagreement between their principal chiefs, by the loss

of a single hour, like the counsel of Hushai in Absalom's rebellion, frustrated

the whole project, divested this band of its martial prowess, and sent it

skulking on the shameful butchery at Cavet's station.



  "The circumstances of this massacre will strikingly illustrate the Indian mode

of warfare, a singular union of cunning, deceit and atrocity, without concert of

action or unity of plan. For at the beginning of the attack Cavet's house

contained three fighting men. These plied their rifles with such coolness and

dexterity that two Indians lay dead and three were wounded. The Indians then

made a temporary halt from the fury of their onset, and employed Bob Benge, a

man of mixed blood, who spoke English, to offer to the garrison terms of surrender.



These, were very favorable, namely, that their lives should be spared and they

exchanged for as many Indian prisoners then among the whites. No sooner were

these terms accepted and the prisoners beginning to leave the house, than

Doublehead and his party fell upon the men and put them to death. He treated the

women and children with barbarous indelicacy and then killed them. John Watts,

who was the main leader of the expedition, interposed and saved one of Cavet's

sons, and poor Benge, who first proposed the conditions of surrender, was all

the time striving, to no purpose, to check the murderous atrocities of Doublehead.



  "How different this confused havoc from the measured discipline of the Roman

legion where to fight 'extra ordmen,' as Sallust says, that is to overstep the

battle line and to fight alone in front of it, was an offense to> be punished

with capital severity.



  "When the Indians had accomplished this inglorious deed, they made for a well

known house on Beaver creek, twelve miles from Knoxville, now owned by Mr.

Callaway. That house had been occupied by Mr. Luke Lea's father. That gentleman,

from an apprehension of danger, had removed his family to the present residence

of Col. Miller Francis, only a week previous to this terrible morning, and thus

happily saved them from becoming the victims of Indian fury. Some of their bed

clothes were still left in the house, and the wheat stacks standing by the barns

and stables. The whole was soon a heap of ashes.



  "The Indians retreated with characteristic speed and address. They sought the

fastness of Clinch, and by a brisk march they were soon beyond the reach of

immediate danger. Danger awaited them still. In three weeks they were bearded

out of their own den by Sevier's invasion."



  Having summoned reinforcements for immediate pursuit, the dashing and knightly

Sevier was soon on the trail of the murderers. The restrictions against carrying

the war into the enemies' country were removed by the territorial secretary,

Daniel Smith, and Sevier, infusing his own impetuous courage into the spirits of

his men, with the speed and fury of the hurricane, struck such blows with torch

and sword as to cause a sudden cessation of Indian hostilities. The campaign,

extending as far down as the present site of Rome, Georgia, is memorable as his

last and one of his most effective. Knoxville was relieved; the gallant soldiery

returned with the small loss of three men; Sevier was to enter upon the larger

field of civil affairs and administrative duties.*



*Humes. Address, 38. 39: Ramsey, 588, 589.



Additional Comments:
From:



STANDARD HISTORY

OF

KNOXVILLE TENNESSEE



WITH FULL OUTLINE OF THE NATURAL ADVANTAGES, EARLY SETTLEMENT, TERRITORIAL

GOVERNMENT, INDIAN TROUBLES, AND GENERAL AND PARTICULAR HISTORY OF THE CITY DOWN

TO THE PRESENT TIME



EDITED BY

WILLIAM RULE

GEORGE F. MELLEN, PH. D., AND J. WOOLDRIDGE COLLABORATORS



PUBLISHED BY

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

CHICAGO 1900

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