Among many attacks on the boats that went down the Tennessee it happens that a full record has been kept of one.  A North Carolinian, named Brown, had served in the Revolutionary War with the troop of Light-Horse Harry Lee, and had received in payment a land certificate.  Under this certificate he entered several tracts of western land, including some on the Cumberland; and in the spring of 1788 he started by boat down the Tennessee, to take possession of his claims.  He took with him his wife and his seven children; and three or four young men also went along.  When they reached the Chicamauga towns the Indians swarmed out towards them in canoes.  On Brown’s boat was a swivel, and with this and the rifles of the men they might have made good their defence; but as soon as the Indians saw them preparing for resistance they halted and hailed the crew, shouting out that they were peaceful and that in consequence of the recent Holston treaties war had ceased between the white men and the red.  Brown was not used to Indians; he was deceived, and before he made up his mind what to do, the Indians were alongside, and many of them came aboard. [Footnote:  Narrative of Col.  Joseph Brown, Southwestern Monthly, Nashville, 1851, i., p. 14.  The story was told when Brown was a very old man, and doubtless some of the details are inaccurate.] They then seized the boat and massacred the men, while the mother and children were taken ashore and hurried off in various directions by the Indians who claimed to have captured them.  One of the boys, Joseph, long afterwards wrote an account of his captivity.  He was not treated with deliberate cruelty, though he suffered now and then from the casual barbarity of some of his captors, and toiled like an ordinary slave.  Once he was doomed to death by a party of Indians, who made him undress, so as to avoid bloodying his clothes; but they abandoned this purpose through fear of his owner, a half-breed, and a dreaded warrior, who had killed many whites.

    Sevier Secures Release of Prisoners.

After about a year’s captivity, Joseph and his mother and sisters were all released, though at different times.  Their release was brought about by Sevier.  When in the fall of 1788 a big band of Creeks and Cherokees took Gillespie’s station, on Little River, a branch of the upper Tennessee, they carried off over a score of women and children.  The four highest chiefs, headed by one with the appropriate name of Bloody Fellow, left behind a note addressed to Sevier and Martin, in which they taunted the whites with their barbarities, and especially with the murder of the friendly Cherokee chief Tassel, and warned them to move off the Indian land. [Footnote:  Ramsey, 519.] In response Sevier made one of his swift raids, destroyed an Indian town on the Coosa River, and took prisoner a large number of Indian women and children.  These were well treated, but were carefully guarded, and were exchanged for the white women and children