While Rutherford rested[64] Williamson, on the 19th, pushed on through Noewee pass, and fell into the ambush which had been laid for the former.  The pass was a narrow, open valley, walled in by steep and lofty mountains.  The Indians waited until the troops were struggling up to the outlet, and then assailed them with a close and deadly fire.  The surprised soldiers recoiled and fell into confusion; and they were for the second time saved from disaster by the gallantry of Colonel Hammond, who with voice and action rallied them, endeavoring to keep them firm while a detachment was sent to clamber up the rocks and outflank the Indians.  At the same time Lieutenant Hampton got twenty men together, out of the rout, and ran forward, calling out:  “Loaded guns advance, empty guns fall down and load.”  Being joined by some thirty men more he pushed desperately upwards.  The Indians fled from the shock; and the army thus owed its safety solely to two gallant officers.  Of the whites seventeen were killed and twenty-nine wounded;[65] they took fourteen scalps.[66]

Although the distance was but twenty odd miles, it took Williamson five days of incredible toil before he reached the valley towns.  The troops showed the utmost patience, clearing a path for the pack-train along the sheer mountain sides and through the dense, untrodden forests in the valleys.  The trail often wound along cliffs where a single misstep of a pack-animal resulted in its being dashed to pieces.  But the work, though fatiguing, was healthy; it was noticed that during the whole expedition not a man was laid up for any length of time by sickness.

Rutherford joined Williamson immediately afterwards, and together they utterly laid waste the valley towns; and then, in the last week of September, started homewards.  All the Cherokee settlements west of the Appalachians had been destroyed from the face of the earth, neither crops nor cattle being left; and most of the inhabitants were obliged to take refuge with the Creeks.

Rutherford reached home in safety, never having experienced any real resistance; he had lost but three men in all.  He had killed twelve Indians, and had captured nine more, besides seven whites and four negroes.  He had also taken piles of deerskins, a hundred-weight of gunpowder and twenty-five hundred pounds of lead; and, moreover, had wasted and destroyed to his heart’s content.[67]

Williamson, too, reached home without suffering further damage, entering Fort Rutledge on October 7th.  In his two expeditions he had had ninety-four men killed and wounded, but he had done much more harm than any one else to the Indians.  It was said the South Carolinians had taken seventy-five scalps;[68] at any rate, the South Carolina Legislature had offered a reward of L75 for every warrior’s scalp, as well as L100 for every Indian, and L80 for every tory or negro, taken prisoner.[69] But the troops were forbidden to sell their prisoners as slaves—­not a needless injunction, as is shown by the fact that when it was issued there had already been at least one case in Williamson’s own army where a captured Indian was sold into bondage.