In 1779 the Chickamaugas, with whom The Dragging Canoe and his irreconcilable followers among the Cherokees had joined hands after the campaign of 1776, grew so bold in their bloody forays upon small exposed settlements that North Carolina and Virginia in conjunction despatched a strong expedition against them.

Embarking on April 10th at the mouth of Big Creek near the present Rogersville, Tennessee, three hundred and fifty men led by Colonel Evan Shelby descended the Tennessee to the fastnesses of the Chickamaugas.

Meeting with no resistance from the astonished Indians, who fled to the shelter of the densely wooded hills, they laid waste the Indian towns and destroyed the immense stores of goods collected by the British agents for distribution among the red men.

The Chickamaugas were completely quelled; and during the period of great stress through which the Tennessee frontiersmen were soon to pass, the Cherokees were restrained through the wise diplomacy of Joseph Martin, Superintendent of Indian affairs for Virginia.
The great British offensive against the Southern colonies, which were regarded as the vulnerable point in the American Confederacy, was fully launched upon the fall of Charleston in May, 1780.

Cornwallis established his headquarters at Camden; and one of his lieutenants, the persuasive and brilliant Ferguson, soon rallied thousands of Loyalists in South Carolina to the British standard.