For the first few years Fort Dobbs was but little used. There was, however, much uneasiness. The year 1757 had, all along the line, been disastrous to English arms in the North, and the Cherokees became increasingly insolent. The next year they committed several deadly assaults in the Valley of Virginia, but themselves suffered greatly in return. The French, at last driven from Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg), had retreated down the Ohio River to Fort Massac, in southern Illinois, and sent their emissaries far and near to stir up the Indians west of the mountains. The following April (1759) the Yadkin and Catawba Valleys were raided by the Cherokees, with the usual results of ruined crops, burned farm-buildings, and murdered households; not a few of the borderers being carried off as prisoners into the Indian country, there generally to suffer either slavery or slow death from the most horrid forms of torture. The Catawbas, meanwhile, remained faithful to their white friends. Until this outbreak the Carolinas had prospered greatly. Hundreds of settlers had poured in from the more exposed northern valleys, and the western uplands were now rapidly being dotted over with clearings and log cabins. The Indian forays at once created a general panic throughout this region, heretofore considered safe. Most of the Yadkin families, together with English fur-traders who hurried in from the woods, huddled within the walls either of Fort Dobbs or of small neighborhood forts hastily constructed; but many others, in their fright, fled with all their possessions to settlements on or near the Atlantic coast. Among the latter were old Squire Boone and his wife, Daniel and Rebecca, with their two sons,[5] and several other families of Bryans and Boones, although some of both names preferred to remain at Fort Dobbs. The fugitives scattered to various parts of Virginia and Maryland--Squire going to Georgetown, now in the District of Columbia, where he lived for three years and then returned to the Yadkin; while Daniel's family went in their two-horse wagon to Culpeper County, in eastern Virginia. The settlers there employed him with his wagon in hauling tobacco to Fredericksburg, the nearest market-town. The April forays created almost as much consternation at Charleston as on the Yadkin. Governor Lyttleton, of South Carolina, sent out fifteen hundred men to overcome the Cherokees, who now pretended to be grieved at the acts of their young hot-bloods and patched up a peace. Fur-traders, eager to renew their profitable barter, hastened back into the western forests. But very soon their confidence was shattered, for the Indians again dug up the tomahawk. Their war-parties infested every road and trail; most of the traders, with trains of packhorses to carry their goods and furs, fell an easy prey to their forest customers; and Forts Loudon, Dobbs, and Prince George were besieged. By January (1760) the entire southwest border was once more a scene of carnage.