An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

Bloody Footprints 69

In Case a War must be proclaimed, the three Southern Prov­

inces of Virginia and the Carolinas should exert their whole

force, enter into and destroy all the [Cherokee] Towns of those

at War with us, and make as many of them as we should take

their Wives and Children Slaves, by sending them to the Islands

[West Indies] if above IO years old ... and to allow IO lbs ster­

ling for every prisoner taken and delivered in each Province. 35

This was the plan adopted. Commander Montgomery was well
aware that even with irregular warfare the military could not defeat
the Cherokees in their own country and that he would need set­
tlers and Indigenous allies serving as scouts and guides. He added to
his troop strength three hundred settler-rangers, forty local militia
members, and fifty Catawba allies. The Cherokee Nation had not
succeeded in forming a confederation with the Muskogees or Chick­
asaws, so their villages were vulnerable. The first target was the au­
tonomous Cherokee town of Estatoe, comprising some two hundred
homes and two thousand people. Montgomery's forces set all the
homes and buildings afire, picking off individuals who tried to flee,
while others who hid inside were burned alive. One after another,
towns were set ablaze until the Cherokees organized a resistance
strong enough to drive out the attackers. The British claimed to have
crushed Cherokee resistance, but they had not, and the Cherokees
laid siege to British forts. A year later, British forces struck again, this
time even harder, and overwhelmed the Cherokees in their capital of
Etchoe and destroyed it. The British then moved on to the other Cher­
okee towns, burning them too. During the month-long, one-sided
battle of annihilation, the British razed fifteen towns and burned
fourteen hundred acres of corn. Five thousand Cherokees were made
homeless refugees, and the number of deaths remained uncounted. 36
Another weapon of war was alcohol, accelerating in the eigh­
teenth century. In 1754, a Catawba leader known as King Hagler by
English colonists petitioned the North Carolina authorities:

Brothers, here is one thing you yourselves are to blame very

much in; that is you rot your grain in tubs, out of which you

take and make strong spirits.