When the superintendant’s deputy[157] convened most of the Muskohge head-men, in order to write a friendly mediating letter to the Chikkasah, in behalf of the Muskohge, the Great Mortar, animated with a bitter resentment against any thing transacted by any of the British nation, introduced a considerable number of his relations, merely to disconcert this plan. The letter, and usual Indian tokens of peace and friendship, were however carried up by a Chikkasah trader: but the Great Mortar timed it so well, that he soon set off after the other with ninety warriors, till he arrived within 150 miles of the Chikkasah country, which was half way from the western barriers of his own; there he encamped with 83, and sent off seven of the staunchest to surprize and kill whomsoever they could. Two days after the express was delivered, they treacherously killed two young women, as they were hoeing in the field; all the people being off their guard, on account of the late friendly tokens they received, and the assurance of the white man that there were no visible tracks of any person on the long trading path he had come. This was the beginning of May, in the year 1768, a few hours after I had set off for South-Carolina. As soon as the sculking barbarians had discharged the contents of their guns into their innocent victims, they tomohawked them, and with their long sharp knives, took off the scalps, put up the death _whoo-whoop-whoop_, and bounded away in an oblique course, to shun the dreaded pursuit. The Chikkasah soon put up their shrill war-whoop, to arm and pursue, and sixty set off on horse-back, full speed. They over-shot that part of the woods the enemy were most likely to have fled through; and four young sprightly Chikkasah warriors who outran the rest, at last discovered, and intercepted them;—they shot dead the Great Mortar’s brother, who was the leader, scalped him, and retook one of the young women’s scalps that was fastened to his girdle. Three continued the chase, and the fourth in a short time overtook them: soon afterward, they came up again with the enemy, at the edge of a large cane-swamp, thick-warped with vines, and china briers; there they stopped, and were at first in doubt of their being some of {271} their own company: the pursued soon discovered them, and immediately inswamped, whereupon the four were forced to decline the attack, the disadvantage being as four to eight in an open engagement. In a few days after, I fell in with them; their gloomy and fierce countenances cannot be expressed; and I had the uncourted honour of their company, three different times before I could reach my destined place, on account of a very uncommon and sudden flow of the rivers, without any rain. Between sunset and eleven o’clock the next day, the river, that was but barely our height in the evening, was swelled to the prodigious height of twenty-five feet perpendicular, and swept along with an impetuous force.