Captain Waddell, our old friend of Braddock's campaign, commanded at Fort Dobbs, with several Bryans and Boones in his little garrison. Here the Cherokees were repulsed with great loss. At Fort Prince George the country round about was sadly harried by the enemy, who finally withdrew. Fort Loudon, however, had one of the saddest experiences in the thrilling annals of the frontier. In April General Amherst, of the British Army, sent Colonel Montgomery against the Cherokees with a formidable column composed of twelve hundred regular troops--among them six hundred kilted Highlanders--to whom were attached seven hundred Carolina backwoods rangers under Waddell, with some Catawba allies. They laid waste with fire and sword all the Cherokee villages on the Keowee and Tennessee Rivers, including the growing crops and magazines of corn. The soldiers killed seventy Indians, captured forty prisoners, and reduced the greater part of the tribe to the verge of starvation. The Cherokees were good fighters, and soon had their revenge. On the morning of the twenty-seventh of June the army was proceeding along a rough road on the southern bank of the Little Tennessee, where on one side is a sheer descent to the stream, on the other a lofty cliff. Here it was ambuscaded by over six hundred savage warriors under the noted chief Silouee. In the course of an engagement lasting several hours the whites lost twenty killed and sixty wounded, and the Cherokee casualties were perhaps greater. Montgomery desperately beat his way to a level tract, but in the night hastily withdrew, and did not stop until he reached Charleston. Despite the entreaties of the Assembly, he at once retired to the North with his little army, and left the frontiers of Carolina open to the assaults of the merciless foe. The siege of Fort Loudon was now pushed by the Cherokees with vigor. It had already withstood several desperate and protracted assaults. But the garrison contrived to exist for several months, almost wholly upon the active sympathy of several Indian women who were married to frontiersmen shut up within the walls. The dusky wives frequently contrived to smuggle food into the fort despite the protests of the Indian leaders. Women, however, despite popular notions to the contrary, have a powerful influence in Indian camps; and they but laughed the chiefs to scorn, saying that they would suffer death rather than refuse assistance to their white husbands.