While the Carolinians had been sweeping into the lower Cherokee country, the Virginia troops had been assembling at the Long Island of the Holston under their leader Colonel William Christian. Their campaign against the Overhill towns was slowly formed here on the little westward pathway, and it was not until the first of October that all the contributions of men and arms from the settlements between Fort Watauga and the Virginia frontier were received. The advance, by way of Big Island of the Holston, was slow but determined--each encampment being made absolutely secure against surprise. The Indians, learning of the strength of Christian's army, knew better than to resist. They retired without a struggle and the borderers reached the heart of the Overhill country on the fifth day of November. Here they ravaged, burned, and razed to their hearts' content, until a deputation imploring peace came from the broken tribes. In this action old Dragging Canoe would have no part but stole away with a few followers toward the Chickamauga. Christian agreed to a treaty which definitely marked out the boundary line between the Indians and the whites, and then returned home leaving a garrison near the Kentucky path by the Holston. In the words of Roosevelt, who of all writers has done this campaign most justice: "The Watauga people and the westerners generally were the real gainers by the war. Had the Watauga settlements been destroyed, they would no longer have covered the Wilderness Road to Kentucky; and so Kentucky must perforce have been abandoned. But the followers of Robertson and Sevier stood stoutly for their homes; not one of them fled over the mountains. The Cherokees had been so roughly handled that for several years they did not again go to war as a body; and this not only gave the settlers a breathing time, but also enabled them to make themselves so strong that when the struggle was renewed they could easily hold their own. The war was thus another and important link in the chain of events by which the west was won; and had any link in the chain snapped during these early years, the peace of 1783 would probably have seen the trans-Alleghany country in the hands of a non-American power." If the holding of this pathway was of such moment the value of the pathway is plainly understood. Turning now to the end of Boone's Road, it will be necessary to review briefly the Revolutionary War in the "far" West; though in many of the campaigns the road itself played no part, in a large and genuine sense it was the pilgrims of Boone's Road who fought the most important battles of the Revolution in the West.