The proud young Briton now made the mistake of his life. He sent a prisoner, Samuel Phillips, over to the frontier settlements, to Colonel Isaac Shelby, with the insolent message that, if the "backwater" men did not quit resisting the royal arms, he would march his army over the mountains, and would straightway lay waste their homes with fire and sword, and hang their leaders. He little knew what kind of men he had stirred to wrath. The frontier settlers of Franklin and Holston, which grew into the great commonwealth of Tennessee, were, for the most part, Scotch-Irish people. They had grappled with the wilderness, and had hewn out homes for themselves. Along with their log cabins they had built meetinghouses and schoolhouses. Their life was {93} full of ever-present peril and hardship; for they were engaged in a ceaseless struggle with the Indians. The minister preached with his gun at his side, and the men listened with their rifles within their grasp. As we should expect, these hardy settlers were generally stanch patriots. They believed in Washington and in the Continental Congress. They knew that British gold bribed the Indians, and furnished them with weapons to butcher their women and children. It was British gold, too, that hired the wild and lawless among them to enlist in the invading army; and it was British officers that drilled them to become expert in killing their brethren of the lowlands. At the time of the Revolution, these backwoodsmen were still fighting with the savages, and so had not taken an active part in the war on the seaboard. Like a rear guard of well-seasoned veterans, they stood between the Indians and their people on the coast. Now these hardy mountaineers took Ferguson's threat seriously. Their Scotch-Irish blood was up. Colonel Shelby, one of the county lieutenants of Washington County, rode posthaste to John Sevier's home, sixty miles away, to carry Ferguson's threat. Sevier lived on the Nolichucky River, and from his deeds of daring and his hospitality was nicknamed "Chucky Jack." When Shelby arrived, it was a day of merrymaking. They were having a barbecue; that is, they were roasting oxen whole on great spits; and a {94} horse race was to be run. The colonel told his story, and the merrymakers agreed to turn out. Shelby now rode home at full speed to muster his own men, and sent urgent word to Colonel William Campbell, a famous Indian fighter, who lived forty miles away, to call out the Holston Virginians. The place appointed for meeting was at Sycamore Shoals, a central point on the Watauga River. The day set was September 25. Hither came Shelby and Sevier with about five hundred men, William Campbell with four hundred Virginians, and McDowell with about one hundred and sixty refugees from North Carolina. Word was sent to Colonel Cleveland, a hunter and Indian fighter of Wilkes County in North Carolina, to come with all the men he could raise east of the mountains.