"A rebel commissioner in Chote being informed of their movements here sent express into Holston river." This "rebel commissioner" was in all probability Robertson.]; and the Holston men, both of Virginia and North Carolina, decided immediately to send an expedition against the homes of the war party.

This would not only at once recall them from the frontier, but would give them a salutary lesson.
Accordingly the backwoods levies gathered on Clinch River, at the mouth of Big Creek, April 10th, and embarked in pirogues and canoes to descend the Tennessee.

There were several hundred of them [Footnote: State Department MSS.No.51, Vol.II., p.

17, a letter from the British agents among the Creeks to Lord George Germaine, of July 12, 1779.

It says, "near 300 rebels"; Haywood, whose accounts are derived from oral tradition, says one thousand.