Chapter 2: 1788, Lookout Mountain

It had been almost eight years since the Battle of King’s Mountain. The British were gone now, but their old Indian allies still roamed the forests of the North Carolina frontier. The most troublesome of the Natives were those Cherokee who belonged to the Chickamauga Band led by Chief Dragging Canoe. In August, they had attacked and massacred two large parties of White settlers.

2 Finally, some of the people who had gathered together as the “Overmountain Men” had had enough. Later that month, General Joseph Martin organized a militia to deal with Dragging Canoe’s warriors. Captain Joseph Bullard and Abraham Sevier (the brother of John) were among the men who volunteered to take part in the operation.

3 “This is the unfinished business of our war with Britain!” Joseph declared. “If we can kill that damned Indian and his warriors, it will be finished,” Abraham agreed.

4 Dragging Canoe expected John Sevier to retaliate, but he didn’t know that the Colonel was currently in North Carolina on other business. “I will ambush my old enemy when he comes out to avenge the death of his people,” he confided to his warriors.

5 The wily chieftain set his trap along a well-known trail that ran between the Tennessee River and Lookout Mountain. He chose a place where the path was narrow and snaked its way around rocks and boulders that had tumbled down the mountain. Dragging Canoe’s men hid among the rocks and trees on the high ground overlooking the trail and were armed with rifles.

6 Captain Bullard was leading the scouting party that fell into the trap. A blood curdling scream erupted above the party that was followed by a hail of bullets. Joseph and two other men dropped almost immediately, but the men behind them began firing in the direction of the scream and the Natives disappeared behind the bluff. The men then grabbed their fallen comrades and drug them back down the trail away from the site of the ambush.

7 By the time they returned to camp, Joseph was dead. “Those murderous bastards will be back with more warriors real soon,” the Colonel shouted. “We’ll have to leave them here and get back to Jonesboro as fast as possible,” he explained.

8 “We ought to give Captain Bullard and the others a decent burial,” one of the men protested. “Yeah, you know what those savages will do to them if they find their bodies,” another agreed. “Alright, you can bury them under that abandoned council house over there,” the Colonel relented. “But hurry, boys! We don’t want to join them,” he warned.

9 The men quickly wrapped the Captain’s body in a blanket and buried him and the others in the floor of the old Indian council house, and then set it afire to conceal the graves. They then gathered up their belongings and began the long march back to their homes.

10 However, some of the Chickamauga warriors had been watching them from the tree line and had observed where they had buried the bodies of their comrades. They simply waited for the fire to burn out, and then they dug up the corpses. But when they unwrapped Captain Bullard’s body, a smile broke out on the face of one of the warriors.

11 “What is it?” one of his friends asked. “This is their leader, John Sevier!” the man proclaimed. “I saw him once at another battle,” he explained. “Dragging Canoe will be so pleased to take revenge on the body of his enemy!” the man agreed.

12 As they carried the corpse through the now darkened forest, a wolf howled somewhere in the distance. “We have killed their leader, and we will drive these people from our lands,” the warrior thought as he hurried into the night with a message that his chief and their people would welcome. He did not know that John Sevier was still alive and was destined to become the first governor of the new state of Tennessee in less than eight years.