Cherokees push back Montgomery
Montgomery destroyed the Lower Towns in early June 1760. In those towns were all the plunder taken from the white settlements earlier this year. Montgomery destroyed that plunder too. "The neatness of those towns and their knowledge of agriculture would surprise you," Grant wrote to [South Carolina's] Lt Gov Bull. "They abounded in every comfort of life, and may curse the day we came upon them."
But it didn't appear this devastation was enough so Montgomery moved deeper.
From Fort Prince George, Montgomery attempted to advance on the Middle Towns where many Cherokee from the [destroyed] Lower Towns had taken refuge.
But this was tougher country. The paths were impassible to large wagons, and even the Scots who were used to mountainous terrain, found the going difficult.
On June 27, 1760 near Echoe, a Cherokee attack inflicted 100 casualties and the loss of so many pack animals that Montgomery decided that he had had enough. Abandoning any thought of pushing on to Fort Loudoun [in today's Tennessee] he retreated to Fort Prince George and in short order to Charleston itself.
Blue and Orange text quotes from Pages 255-256, "The French and Indian War, Deciding the Fate of North America" by Walter R Borneman, hardcover 2006, softcover 2007 by Harper Perennial.
The Battle 27 June 1760
". . . shots spurted from the thickets. . . . with arrows slanting and bullets whining among them. Six Hundred or more Lower and Middle Cherokees led by Tistoe and Seroweh, Milne's recent captives, lay concealed in the thick growth.
[ Ensign Milne was the commanding officer of the most forward fort of South Carolina other than Fort Loudoun in today's Tennessee. Ensign Milne had tricked some Cherokees in entertaining their peace overtures and took them hostage.]
Under heavy fire, the Rangers drew back. Captain Morrison, their leader was shot and killed. Captain Manly Williams, a favorite of the army, moved forward with the Royal Scots company of light infantry to support the rangers. He was a conspicuous figure as he rallied the highlanders to the fight, and the Indians, mistaking him for Montgomery, concentrated their fire upon him. He fell in a storm of bullets and from the ground cried, "Advance, my brave boys, never mind me." Some of his men rushed to help him, and three were shot down over him. It is probable at this stage of battle the fighting was close in and the Scots were in confusion as the Indians strove to take scalps and prisoner, for the Cherokees took a drum and captured a piper and his pipes.
. . . the officers and me n of the 77th had seen this action before. Eventually the Royal Scots formed in line to receive the attack and responded to the wild Cherokee cries with "three whirras and three waves" of their bonnets. With their quarry at bay, scalp hungry warriors rushed upon the Scots; but the highlanders did not panic, and the attack soon lost momentum and died down to sporadic shooting from bush and tree. Then the battalions moved against the hidden foe. In the openings and above the low brush the long frontal lines of redcoats made brilliant targets, and Scots fell left and right. But the Cherokees were driven from cover, stole away, and the troops formed again in column and marched toward the now deserted town of Etchoe.
As the column advance, the Cherokees hit the long pack train which followed, shooting down horses or cutting them out for their own use. But the rear guard and rangers with the help of reinforcement soon remedied this; and the train fetching, fetching along the wounded from Tessuntee field, made Etchoe in safety. The British losses for that day were for the regulars 17 killed and 66 wounded,comprise and for the provincials and rangers the unstated number comprised in the words "several" and "a few."
Bravery saw its day there, from both sides.
600 Cherokees.
1200 comprised of Rangers, Highlanders.
Just under a 100 casualties on the British side.
This is Halloween country. Mountains. Darkness. Shadows. Unseen enemy. A feeling that they could be massacred.
They finally make it to the abandoned Middle town of Etchoe. They stay a day. Montgomery mulls over this chances of continuing. By night he decides. He leaves the lights on in the town houses. He and his troops leave.
There's going to be one more expedition but nobody knows this yet. Grant who was on this Montgomery expedition is going to lead his own expedition and that is the one that will be an almost complete devastation.
The days after the Battle, 28 June 1760 - 1 July 1760
. . . the army rested at Echoe, caring for its wounded. Late in the afternoon Cherokees fired from a neary-by hill into the camp, but when a company of the 77th crossed the Little Tennessee and deliverd several volleys at them, they fled. Montgomery spent the day taking stock of his situation. He had marched through "passes the most dangerous man had ever had to penetrate."
" . . . leaving light in the houses of Etchoe, [they] moved swiftly back over the road they had come. Passing the battlefield where they saw the scalped bodies of William Morrison, and the others, they marched 28 miles before they camped at Tuckareetchee Old Fields.
The next day they pushed on to Oconee, halting only while a detachment dislodged some Indians on a hill near the line of march.
On July 1 the army reached its old campsite near Fort Prince George. After a day of rest, leaving 6 months provisions and 40 head of cattle, along with 2 wounded Sergeants and 24 privates at the fort, it marched rapidly downcountry toward its waiting ships.
Pages 212-214
The Cherokee Frontier, Conflict and Survival 1740-1762, by David H Corkran, published by the University of Oklahoma Press 1962).
Aftermath as written by a different author
The dispritied army trudged over the battlefield, encountering the diinterred, scalped, stripped, and mutilated bodies of Captain Manly Williams of the Royal Scots, and others. The men marched 25 miles to War-Woman's Creek, where they camped for the night.
Cherokees waited, too, intending to attack the next morning at a river crossing half a mile to the south. Just after the troops began their march, 55 Highlander flankers led by Montgomery's cousin, Lt Hugh Montgomery, spotted 60 Cherokees camped on a hill top. The Highlanders opened fire. More soldiers emptied a volley fo shots into a group of Cherokees perched on another hill. The Cherokees dispersed with several dead. Cherokees then attacked the rear of the army as it forded the crossing. One Highlander was killed and another was wounded. British estimates placed the Cherokee dead of "at least a Dozen" that day. Given these casualties and a paucity of ammunition, the Cherokees withdrew, and the army reached Fort Prince George uncontested.
Page 128
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American .Southeast 1756-1763 By Daniel J. Tortora, published by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2015.
At Fort Prince George 1 July 1760
As fear mounted, dissension made life tense in the garrison. Rangers and provincial soldiers deserted in droves. As Gadsedn later wrote, fed up with Grant's haughty treatement and disrespect on the campaingn, they were futher incensed to find their comrads "picked off" and the colonel :tamely submitting" to daily "scalping parties." The demoralized soldiers threated to return to Charles Town. Montgomery left a detachment of British regulars "to strengthen the garrison and to keep the others in order." With Atkin -- who would be negotiating a peace treaty after all -- and with the sick and wounded --- the retreat resumed. The day after Montgomery's departure, 4 Cherokees killed and scalped a provincial soldier at Fort Prince George. It was an ominous sign to the British.
Page 128
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American .Southeast 1756-1763 By Daniel J. Tortora, published by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2015.
Mission Accomplished Spin:
By August, Montgomery's force was enroute back to New York, and Amherst was calling the venture "the greatest stroke the Indians have felt." It was hardly that. Despite leaving some provisions and reinforcements at Fort Prince George, Montgomery had returned to Charleston without address any of the underlying issues. For their part, the Cherokee were certain that the column of redcoats had withdrawn out of fear.
Page 256, "The French and Indian War, Deciding the Fate of North America" by Walter R Borneman, hardcover 2006, softcover 2007 by Harper Perennial.
The Underlying issues.
One of the underlying issues was the August 15, 1759 embargo on blackpowder by the now departed SC Governor Lyttelton. The Cherokee needed the blackpowder for hunting. This provided the deerskins (50,000 deerskins a year) they would trade with the white traders for more muskets and blackpower and cooking tools and clothing, and powderhorns and tomahawks.
The other issues were revenge spiralling on revenge that began after the 1758 Forbes Expedition. The Cherokees were promised presents for helping in that expedition. They never received them. On the way home they stole horses for that broken promise. White settlers killed the Cherokees on their way back home. Cherokees then sought revenge for those killings. This went on into 1760. Often the revenge did not focus on the actual perpertrators.
The other issue were the killing of hostages. Over 20 Cherokee hostages were killed Feb 16 1760 held at Fort Prince George when Oconostota tricked the fort's commander, Lt Coytmore to parley for peace. The Cherokee shot Coytmore and he was rescued only to die from the wounds inside the fort. The anger over this trick led the garrison to kill the Cherokee hostages who were themselves tricked into becoming prisoneers by the now departed Governor Lyttelton.
What transpired before Montgomery's retreat:
Amherst responded [to South Carolina's request for help] by dispatching the First and Seventy-Seventh regiments of Highlanders under to command of Archibald Montgomery to Charleston. Montgomery's second command was Major James Grant [who later ran the 3rd expedition against the Cherokee confederation] , recently exchanged as a prisoner of war after having been captured outside Fort Duquesne . . .
Montgomery marched to the relief of [Fort] Ninety Six and then moved westward to Fort Prince George, destroying [starting on June 1, 1760] a succession of Cherokee villages in the Lower Towns in the process.
"The neatness of those towns and their knowledge of agriculture would surprise you," Grant wrote to [South Carolina's] Lt Gov Bull.
"They abounded in every comfort of life, and may curse the day we came upon them."
That thought mirrored what Little Carpenter (Attakullakulla) foresaw when he advocated peace his fellow hawkish Cherokees.
Page 255, "The French and Indian War, Deciding the Fate of North America" by Walter R Borneman, hardcover 2006, softcover 2007 by Harper Perennial.
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Compiled by Jim Moyer 6/5/2024, researched in May 2024,updated 6/23/2024
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50,000 deerskin trade annually
Page 6, The Cherokee Frontier, Conflict and Survival 1740-1762, by David H Corkran, published by University of Oklahoma Press 1962, paperback published 2016
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.Sunday Word 1 posted 6/23/2024
Cherokees push back Montgomery
Montgomery destroyed the Lower Towns in early June 1760. In those towns were all the plunder taken from the white settlements earlier this year. Montgomery destroyed that plunder too. "The neatness of those towns and their knowledge of agriculture would surprise you," Grant wrote to South Carolina's Lt Gov Bull. "They abounded in every comfort of life, and may curse the day we came upon them."
But it didn't appear this devastation was enough so Montgomery moved deeper.
The Battle June 27,1760
Bravery saw its day there, from both sides.
600 Cherokees.
1200 comprised of Rangers, Highlanders.
Just under a 100 casualties on the British side.
This is Halloween country. Mountains. Darkness. Shadows. Unseen enemy. A feeling that they could be massacred.
They finally make it to the abandoned Middle town of Etchoe. They stay a day. Montgomery mulls over this chances of continuing. By night he decides. He leaves the lights on in the town houses. He and his troops leave.
There's going to be one more expedition but nobody knows this yet. Grant who was on this Montgomery expedition is going to lead his own expedition and that is the one that will be an almost complete devastation. Grant was the one who was taken captive outside of Fort Duquesne. He was returned in time to join this Montgomery expedition.
He had been captured along with our Virginia Regiment's Major Andrew Lewis, who also had been returned. Major Andrew Lewis came often to Fort Loudoun guiding our Cherokee allies to our fort in Winchester VA and also presiding as "President" over the many court martials at Fort Loudoun. He even had presided over the trial that led to two hangings at Fort Loudoun Winchester VA.
Andrew Lewis also is on a Virginia expedition that stalls.
Both Montgomery's British army and Byrd's Virginia Regiment with Andrew Lewis and Adam Stephen leave Fort Loudoun in today's Tennessee an abandoned Alamo taking on a siege.
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