So persistent were the depredations of the Indians and so alarmed were the scattered Rowan settlers by the news of the murders and the destruction of Vaul's Fort in Virginia (June 25, 1756) that at a conference on July 5th the Moravians "decided to protect our houses with palisades, and make them safe before the enemy should in vade our tract or attack us, for if the people were all going to retreat we would be the last left on the frontier and the first point of attack." By July 23d, they had constructed a strong defense for their settlement, afterward called the "Dutch Fort" by the Indians.

The principal structure was a stockade, triangular in plan, some three hundred feet on a side, enclosing the principal buildings of the settlement; and the gateway was guarded by an observation tower.

The other defense was a stockade embracing eight houses at the mill some distance away, around which a small settlement had sprung up.
During the same year the fort planned by Dobbs was erected upon the site he had chosen--between Third and Fourth creeks; and the commissioners Richard Caswell and Francis Brown, sent out to inspect the fort, made the following picturesque report to the Assembly (December 21, 1756): "That they had likewise viewed the State of Fort Dobbs, and found it to be a good and Substantial Building of the Dimentions following (that is to say) The Oblong Square fifty three feet by forty, the opposite Angles Twenty four feet and Twenty-Two In Height Twenty four and a half feet as by the Plan annexed Appears, The Thickness of the Walls which are made of Oak Logs regularly Diminished from sixteen Inches to Six, it contains three floors and there may be discharged from each floor at one and the same time about one hundred Musketts the same is beautifully scituated in the fork of Fourth Creek a Branch of the Yadkin River.

And that they also found under Command of Cap' Hugh Waddel Forty six Effective men Officers and Soldiers, the said Officers and Soldiers Appearing well and in good Spirits." As to the erection of a fort on the Tennessee, promised the Cherokees by South Carolina, difficulties between the governor of that province and of Virginia in regard to matters of policy and the proportionate share of expenses made effective cooperation between the two colonies well-nigh impossible.

Glen, as we have seen, had resented Dinwiddie's efforts to win the South Carolina Indians over to Virginia's interest.