When the slaveholding Creeks learned that the Exiles had left, they collected together and sent a war party in pursuit, for the purpose of capturing as many as they could, in order to sell them to the slave-dealers from Louisiana and Arkansas, who were then present among the Creeks, encouraging them to make another piratical descent upon the Exiles for the capture of slaves. This war party came up with the emigrants on the third day after leaving their homes. But Wild Cat and Abraham, and their experienced warriors, were not to be surprised. They were prepared and ready for the conflict. With them it was death or victory. They boldly faced their foes. Their wives and children were looking on with emotions not to be described. With the coolness of desperation, they firmly resolved on dying, or on driving back the slave-catching Creeks from the field of conflict. Their nerves were steady, and their aim fatal. Their enemies soon learned the danger and folly of attempting to capture armed men who were fighting for freedom. They fled, leaving their dead upon the field; which is always regarded by savages as dishonorable defeat.[138] The Exiles resumed their journey, still maintaining their warlike arrangement. Directing their course south-westerly, they crossed the Rio Grande, and continuing nearly in the same direction, they proceeded into Mexico, until they reached the vicinity of the ancient but now deserted town of Santa Rosa.[139] In that beautiful climate, they found a rich, productive soil. Here they halted, examined the country, and finally determined to locate their new homes in this most romantic portion of Mexico. Here they erected their cabins, planted their gardens, commenced plantations, and resumed their former habits of agricultural life. There they yet remain. Forcibly torn from their native land, oppressed, wronged, and degraded, they became voluntary Exiles from South Carolina and Georgia. More recently exiled from Florida and from the territory of the United States--they are yet _free_! After the struggles and persecutions of a hundred and fifty years, they repose in comparative quiet under a government which repudiates slavery. To the pen of some future historian we consign their subsequent history. Before taking leave of the reader, we would call his attention to a review of the fate which attended different portions of the Exiles, and to a few further incidents, for some of which we have only newspaper authority; but from all the circumstances we have no doubt they actually transpired. Of the Exiles and their descendants, twelve were delivered up at the treaty of Colerain in 1796, and consigned to slavery; two hundred and seventy were massacred at Blount's Fort in 1816; thirty were taken prisoners--these all died of wounds or were enslaved. At the different battles in the first Seminole War in 1818, it is believed that at least four hundred were slain, including those who fell at Blount's Fort.