The second and most important movement was to be made by South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia jointly, each sending a column of two thousand men,[56] the two former against the middle and valley, the latter against the Overhill towns.  If the columns acted together the Cherokees would be overwhelmed by a force three times the number of all their warriors.  The plan succeeded well, although the Virginia division was delayed so that its action, though no less effective, was much later than that of the others, and though the latter likewise failed to act in perfect unison.

Rutherford and his North Carolinians were the first to take the field.[57] He had an army of two thousand gunmen, besides pack-horsemen and men to tend the drove of bullocks, together with a few Catawba Indians,—­a total of twenty-four hundred.[58] On September 1st he left the head of the Catawba,[59] and the route he followed was long known by the name of Rutherford’s trace.  There was not a tent in his army, and but very few blankets; the pack-horses earned the flour, while the beef was driven along on the hoof.  Officers and men alike wore homespun hunting-shirts trimmed with colored cotton; the cloth was made from hemp, tow, and wild-nettle bark.

He passed over the Blue Ridge at Swananoa Gap, crossed the French Broad at the Warriors’ Ford, and then went through the mountains[60] to the middle towns, a detachment of a thousand men making a forced march in advance.  This detachment was fired at by a small band of Indians from an ambush, and one man was wounded in the foot; but no further resistance was made, the towns being abandoned.[61] The main body coming up, parties of troops were sent out in every direction, and all of the middle towns were destroyed.  Rutherford had expected to meet Williamson at this place, but the latter did not appear, and so the North Carolina commander determined to proceed alone against the valley towns along the Hiawassee.  Taking with him only nine hundred picked men, he attempted to cross the rugged mountain chains which separated him from his destination; but he had no guide, and missed the regular pass—­a fortunate thing for him, as it afterwards turned out, for he thus escaped falling into an ambush of five hundred Cherokees who were encamped along it.[62] After in vain trying to penetrate the tangle of gloomy defiles and wooded peaks, he returned to the middle towns at Canucca on September 18th.  Here he met Williamson, who had just arrived, having been delayed so that he could not leave Fort Rutledge until the 13th.[63] The South Carolinians, two thousand strong, had crossed the Blue Ridge near the sources of the Little Tennessee.