The Winning of the West, Volume 2: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 2: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
But Campbell's official report says that the towns "in
the neighborhood of Chickamauga and the Town of Cologn, situated on the
sources of the Mobile" were _not_ destroyed, nor visited, and he
carefully enumerates all the towns that the troops burned and the
regions they went through. They did not go near Chickamauga nor the
Coosa. Unless there is some documentary evidence in favor of the
assertions of Haywood and Ramsey they cannot for a moment be taken
against the explicit declaration of the official report.
Mr. Kirke merely follows Ramsey, and adds a few flourishes of his own,
such as that at the Chickamauga towns "the blood of the slaughtered
cattle dyed red the Tennessee" for some twenty miles, and that "the
homes of over forty thousand people were laid in ashes." This last
estimate is just about ten times too strong, for the only country
visited was that of the Overhill Cherokees, and the outside limit for
the population of the devastated territory would be some four thousand
souls, or a third of the Cherokee tribe, which all told numbered perhaps
twelve thousand people.]
In the burnt towns, and on the dead warriors, were found many letters
and proclamations from the British agents and commanders, showing that
almost every chief in the nation had been carrying on a double game; for
the letters covered the periods at which they had been treating with the
Americans and earnestly professing their friendship for the latter and
their determination to be neutral in the contest then waging. As
Campbell wrote in his report to the Virginian governor, no people had
ever acted with more foolish duplicity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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