At sunrise on the 25th the Indians heard the morning gun at the barracks at Knoxville and concluded that it was an alarm signal. Halting near Cavet’s blockhouse, eight miles from the village, they entertained themselves by decoying and butchering the inmates. Their coming had been made known on the 24th to the people of Knoxville, who prepared with courage and energy to resist them. The total fighting strength of the whites was forty men. It was determined to waylay the Indians, and after firing upon them to retreat to the barracks. Accordingly, leaving two old men with the women and children, the remaining thirty-eight spent the night concealed on a wooded ridge west of the town, fearlessly awaiting a foe outnumbering them more than twenty to one. Early on the morning of the 25th, however, a messenger brought the news that the Indians had lost heart after the affair at Cavet’s and were in full retreat. In this little band of defenders was the Rev. Samuel Carrick, a Presbyterian minister, afterwards the first President of Blount College, of whose conduct on this occasion there is a pleasing and honorable tradition. It is said that when news of the invasion came he was preparing to bury his wife, who had just died, but, putting aside his grief, and leaving her beloved remains to be buried by the women of the neighborhood, he seized his rifle and hastened to take his post at the front. A month later the Tennessee militia, led by Sevier, were in the heart of the Indian country, and the battle of Etowah, on the 17th of October, 1793, ended the campaign and cowed the savages. From this time until the Civil War, Knoxville was outside the current of important public events. From 1792 to 1796, it was the capital of the “Territory South of the River Ohio”; from 1796 to 1811, except for a little while in 1807, it was the capital of Tennessee. About this time the capital of the State became peripatetic, on account of the westward trend of population. As late as 1834, we find a member of the Constitutional Convention of that year introducing a resolution for the ascertainment of the “centre of gravity” of the State, with a view to the permanent location of the capital upon it. It will be interesting to know that the official to whom the question was referred reported the centre of gravity to be identical with the geographical centre. The capital was finally fixed at Nashville, which is not on the centre of gravity, but is otherwise fully entitled to the honor. Meanwhile, in 1817, the capital returned for a brief stay at Knoxville, and then finally departed westward.