It was well that the whites were on their guard. Towards the end of September a big war party, under the command of John Watts and including some two hundred Cherokees, eighty Creeks, and some Shawnees, left the Chickamauga Towns and marched swiftly and silently to the Cumberland district. They attempted to surprise one of the more considerable of the lonely little forted towns. It was known as Buchanan's Station, and in it there were several families, including fifteen "gun-men." Two spies went out from it to scour the country and give warning of any Indian advance; but with the Cherokees were two very white half-breeds, whose Indian blood was scarcely noticeable, and these two men met the spies and decoyed them to their death. The Indians then, soon after midnight on the 30th of September, sought to rush the station by surprise. The alarm was given by the running of the frightened cattle, and when the sentinel fired at the assailants they were not ten yards from the gate of the blockhouse. The barred door withstood the shock and the flame-flashes lit up the night as the gun-men fired through the loop-holes. The Indians tried to burn the fort, one of the chiefs, a half-breed, leaping on the roof; he was shot through the thigh and rolled off; but he stayed close to the logs trying to light them with his torch, alternately blowing it into a blaze and halloing to the Indians to keep on with the attack. However, he was slain, as was the Shawnee head chief, and several warriors, while John Watts, leader of the expedition, was shot through both thighs. The log walls of the grim little blockhouse stood out black in the fitful glare of the cane torches; and tongues of red fire streamed into the night as the rifles rang. The attack had failed, and the throng of dark, flitting forms faded into the gloom as the baffled Indians retreated. So disheartened were they by the check, and by the loss they had suffered, that they did not further molest the settlements, but fell back to their strongholds across the Tennessee. Among the Cherokee chiefs who led the raid were two signers of the treaty of Holston. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Oct. 17, 1792; _Knoxville Gazette_, Oct. 10, and Oct. 20, 1792; Brown's Narrative, in _Southwestern Monthly_.] Monotony of the Indian Outrages.