They gave him a half breed, John Watts, afterwards one of their chiefs, as guide; and he marched quickly against some of the Chickamauga towns, where he destroyed the cabins and provision hoards.  Afterwards he penetrated to the Coosa, where he burned one or two Creek villages.  The inhabitants fled from the towns before he could reach them; and his own motions were so rapid that they could never gather in force strong enough to assail him. [Footnote:  The authority for this expedition is Haywood (p. 106); Ramsey simply alters one or two unimportant details.  Haywood commits so many blunders concerning the early Indian wars that it is only safe to regard his accounts as true in outline; and even for this outline it is to be wished we had additional authority.  Mr. Kirke, in the “Rear-guard,” p. 313, puts in an account of a battle on Lookout Mountain, wherein Sevier and his two hundred men defeat “five hundred tories and savages.”  He does not even hint at his authority for this, unless in a sentence of the preface where he says, “a large part of my material I have derived from what may be termed ’original sources’—­old settlers.”  Of course the statement of an old settler is worthless when it relates to an alleged important event which took place a hundred and five years before, and yet escaped the notice of all contemporary and subsequent historians.  In plain truth unless Mr. Kirke can produce something like contemporary—­or approximately contemporary—­documentary evidence for this mythical battle, it must be set down as pure invention.  It is with real reluctance that I speak thus of Mr. Kirke’s books.  He has done good service in popularizing the study of early western history, and especially in calling attention to the wonderful careers of Sevier and Robertson.  Had he laid no claim to historic accuracy I should have been tempted to let his books pass unnoticed; but in the preface to his “John Sevier” he especially asserts that his writings “may be safely accepted as authentic history.”  On first reading his book I was surprised and pleased at the information it contained; when I came to study the subject I was still more surprised and much less pleased at discovering such wholesale inaccuracy—­to be perfectly just I should be obliged to use a stronger term.  Even a popular history ought to pay at least some little regard to truth.] Very few Indians were killed, and apparently none of Sevier’s people; a tory, an ex-British sergeant, then living with an Indian squaw, was among the slain.

This foray brought but a short relief to the settlements.  On Christmas day three men were killed on the Clinch; and it was so unusual a season for the war parties to be abroad that the attack caused widespread alarm. [Footnote:  Calendar of Va.  State Papers, III., p. 424.] Early in the spring of 1783 the ravages began again. [Footnote:  Do., p. 479.] Some time before General Wayne had addressed the Creeks and Choctaws, reproaching them with the aid they had