Had we thus done, many valuable and innocent persons might have been saved from the torturing hands of the enraged Indians! The favourite leading warrior of those friendly towns, was well known to South-Carolina and Georgia, by the trading name—“_Round O._” on account of a blue impression he bore in that form. The same old, brave, and friendly warrior, depending firmly on our friendship and usual good faith, came down within an hundred miles of Charles-town, along with the head-men, and many others of those towns, to declare to the government, an inviolable attachment to all our British colonies, under every various circumstance of life whatsoever; and at the same time, earnestly to request them to supply their present want of ammunition, and order the commanding officer of Fort-Prince-George to continue to do them the like service, when necessity should force them to apply for it; as they were fully determined to war {249} to the very last, against all the enemies of Carolina, without regarding who they were, or the number they consisted of. This they told me on the spot; for having been in a singular manner recommended to his excellency the general, I was pre-engaged for that campaign—but as I could not obtain orders to go a-head of the army, through the woods, with a body of the Chikkasah,[135] and commence hostilities, I declined the affair. Had our valuable, and well-meaning Cheerake friends just mentioned, acted their usual part of evading captivity, it would have been much better for them, and many hundreds of our unfortunate out-settlers; but they depending on our usual good faith, by their honest credulity were ruined. It was well-known, that the Indians are unacquainted with the custom and meaning of hostages; to them, it conveyed the idea of slaves, as they have no public faith to secure the lives of such—yet they were taken into custody, kept in close confinement, and afterwards shot dead: their mortal crime consisted in sounding the war-whoop, and hollowing to their countrymen, when attacking the fort in which they were imprisoned, to fight like strong-hearted warriors, and they would soon carry it, against the cowardly traitors, who deceived and inslaved their friends in their own beloved country. A white savage on this cut through a plank, over their heads, and perpetrated that horrid action, while the soldiery were employed like warriors, against the enemy: to excuse his baseness, and save himself from the reproaches of the people, he, like the wolf in the fable, falsely accused them of intending to poison the wells of the garrison.[136]