And legend says further that when, after Sevier's brief widowerhood, she became his wife, four years later, Bonnie Kate was wont to say that she would be willing to run another such race any day to have another such introduction! There were no casualties within the fort and, after three hours, the foe withdrew, leaving several of their warriors slain.
In the excursions against the Indians which followed this opening of hostilities Sevier won his first fame as an "Indian fighter"-- the fame later crystallized in the phrase "thirty-five battles, thirty-five victories." His method was to take a very small company of the hardiest and swiftest horsemen--men who could keep their seat and endurance, and horses that could keep their feet and their speed, on any steep of the mountains no matter how tangled and rough the going might be--swoop down upon war camp, or town, and go through it with rifle and hatchet and fire, then dash homeward at the same pace before the enemy had begun to consider whether to follow him or not.

In all his "thirty-five battles" it is said he lost not more than fifty men.
The Cherokees made peace in 1777, after about a year of almost continuous warfare, the treaty being concluded on their side by the old chiefs who had never countenanced the war.

Dragging Canoe refused to take part, but he was rendered innocuous for the time being by the destruction of several of the Chickamaugan villages.

James Robertson now went to Chota as Indian agent for North Carolina.

So fast was population growing, owing to the opening of a wagon road into Burke County, North Carolina, that Washington County was divided.