No less than fourteen of their towns, in the middle settlements, shared the fate of Etchoee.

Their granaries were yielded to the flames, their cornfields ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the unsparing sword, took refuge, with their almost starving families, among the barren mountains, which could yield them little but security.

A chastisement so extreme was supposed to be necessary, in order to subdue for ever that lively disposition for war, upon the smallest provocation, which, of late years, the Cherokees had manifested but too frequently; but it may be doubted whether the means which were employed for administering this admonitory lesson, were of the most legitimate character.

We must always continue to doubt that humanity required the destruction of towns and hamlets, whose miserable walls of clay and roofs of thatch could give shelter to none but babes and sucklings--women with their young--those who had never offended, and those who could not well offend--the innocent victims to an authority which they never dared oppose.

The reckless destruction of their granaries--fields yet growing with grain--necessarily exposed to the worst privations of famine only those portions of the savage population who were least guilty.