“While Major Ore was out against the Lower Town,” he wrote, “the Indians continued their depredations against the district of Mero. On the night of the fourteenth September, the Indians pulled up a part of the stockading of Morgan’s station, and took out a valuable gelding tied to his dwelling house. The sixteenth of the same month, a woman on Red river near Major Sharp’s was killed by the Indians. The same day a party of Indians fired upon five men near Mr. Andrew Jackson’s, on the south side of Cumberland river, killed one man, and wounded two; among the latter is Mr. John Bosley. The same party burned the houses of John Donnelson and the widow Hayes. From the nearness of the time, and the distance of the situation, within which the above injuries were committed, there must have been three parties of Indians.” (_Indian Affairs_, Vol. I, page 663.) The Nickajack expedition began on September 8, 1794, so at the time that these depredations took place the settlement was in an unprotected condition. Since before the Civil War Andrew Jackson’s participation in this campaign has been a matter of dispute. The historian Ramsey, in his _Annals of Tennessee_, said that he served as a private; but Putnam, in his work on Middle Tennessee, basing his statement on the word of men who participated in the expedition, declares that he did not go. Putnam is followed by Parton and, since both of them have so vehemently denied that he had a part in it, this position has been almost generally accepted. Ramsey based his statement on papers of Willie Blount, half brother of the territorial governor, who, at the time was secretary of the territory, and was later himself governor of Tennessee. Both Putnam and Parton have failed to take into consideration the importance of Blount’s testimony—or, perhaps, did not have access to his papers. A letter which should settle the controversy permanently has been recently acquired by the state historian and librarian, Mrs. John Trotwood Moore. This letter, written to General Jackson on January 4, 1830, by Willie Blount, states: “I have by me the rough draft of sundry letters, from me to you, none of which have yet been either copied or mailed: they relate to things gone bye, & so, no matter whether they are ever sent or not: they speak only of the pleasurable feelings I experience in the knowledge I possess of the motives and conduct in the various promotions of my friend yourself and the result of your efforts since the battle of Nickajack, commanded by Orr: where, as Sampson Williams says, our friend, the Mountain Leader, the friend of man, was at that never to be forgotten good days work, in which you lent an active useful hand, that gave peace to our frontier, never to be forgotten by me.”