neighbors gathered, pursued the Indians, and recaptured the survivors.
[Footnote: Calendar of Va. State Papers, III., p. 317.] Other outrages
followed, throughout the month. Sevier as usual came to the rescue of
the angered settlers. He gathered a couple of hundred mounted riflemen,
and made one of his swift retaliatory inroads. His men were simply
volunteers, for there was no money in the country treasury with which to
pay them or provide them with food and provisions; it was their own
quarrel, and they furnished their own services free, each bringing his
horse, rifle, ammunition, blanket, and wallet of parched corn. Naturally
such troops made war purely according to their own ideas, and cared
nothing whatever for the commands of those governmental bodies who were
theoretically their superiors. They were poor men, staunch patriots, who
had suffered much and done all they could during the Revolution
[Footnote: _Do_.]; now, when threatened by the savages they were left to
protect themselves, and they did it in their own way. Sevier led his
force down through the Overhill towns, doing their people no injury and
holding a peace talk with them. They gave him a half breed, John Watts,
afterwards one of their chiefs, as guide; and he marched quickly against
some of the Chickamauga towns, where he destroyed the cabins and
provision hoards. Afterwards he penetrated to the Coosa, where he burned
one or two Creek villages. The inhabitants fled from the towns before he
could reach them; and his own motions were so rapid that they could
never gather in force strong enough to assail him. [Footnote: The
authority for this expedition is Haywood (p. 106); Ramsey simply alters
one or two unimportant details. Haywood commits so many blunders
concerning the early Indian wars that it is only safe to regard his
accounts as true in outline; and even for this outline it is to be
wished we had additional authority. Mr. Kirke, in the "Rear-guard," p.
313, puts in an account of a battle on Lookout Mountain, wherein Sevier
and his two hundred men defeat "five hundred tories and savages." He