If the columns acted together the Cherokees would be overwhelmed by a force three times the number of all their warriors.

The plan succeeded well, although the Virginia division was delayed so that its action, though no less effective, was much later than that of the others, and though the latter likewise failed to act in perfect unison.
Rutherford and his North Carolinians were the first to take the field.[57] He had an army of two thousand gunmen, besides pack-horsemen and men to tend the drove of bullocks, together with a few Catawba Indians,--a total of twenty-four hundred.[58] On September 1st he left the head of the Catawba,[59] and the route he followed was long known by the name of Rutherford's trace.

There was not a tent in his army, and but very few blankets; the pack-horses earned the flour, while the beef was driven along on the hoof.

Officers and men alike wore homespun hunting-shirts trimmed with colored cotton; the cloth was made from hemp, tow, and wild-nettle bark.
He passed over the Blue Ridge at Swananoa Gap, crossed the French Broad at the Warriors' Ford, and then went through the mountains[60] to the middle towns, a detachment of a thousand men making a forced march in advance.

This detachment was fired at by a small band of Indians from an ambush, and one man was wounded in the foot; but no further resistance was made, the towns being abandoned.[61] The main body coming up, parties of troops were sent out in every direction, and all of the middle towns were destroyed.