Although New France was now tottering to its fall, the French officers at Fort Massac still continued, with their limited resources, to keep alive the Cherokee war spirit. French outrages occurred throughout the autumn and early winter of 1760. At nearly all of the forts, large and small, skirmishes took place, some of these giving occasion for exhibitions of rare enterprise and courage on the part of the garrisons, women and men alike.
During the winter, the governors of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina agreed upon a joint campaign against the hostiles. The southern column, comprising twenty-six hundred men, chiefly Highlanders, was under Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant. Starting early in June, they carried with them seven hundred packhorses, four hundred head of cattle, and a large train of baggage and supplies. Their route from Fort Prince George to the lower and middle Cherokee towns on the Little Tennessee lay through a rough, mountainous country; high water, storms, intensely warm weather, the lack of tents, and bruises from rocks and briers, caused the troops to suffer greatly. After heavy losses from ambuscades in narrow defiles, they finally reached their destination, and spent a month in burning and ravaging fifteen or more large villages and fourteen hundred acres of growing corn, and in driving five thousand men, women, and children into the hills to starve. Wrote one of the pious participators in this terrible work of devastation: "Heaven has blest us with the greatest success; we have finished our business as completely as the most sanguine of us could have wished." The Cherokees, completely crushed, humbly begged for peace, which was granted upon liberal terms and proved to be permanent.
The northern column was composed of backwoodsmen from Virginia and North Carolina, under Colonel William Byrd, an experienced campaigner. Byrd was much hampered for both men and supplies, and accomplished little. He appears to have largely spent his time in making roads and building blockhouses--laborious methods ill-fitted for Indian warfare, and loudly criticized by Waddell, who joined him with a regiment of five hundred North Carolinians, among whom was Daniel Boone, now returned to the Yadkin. Waddell and Boone had experienced the folly of this sort of thing in Braddock's ill-fated campaign. As a result of dissatisfaction, Byrd resigned, and Colonel Stephen succeeded him. The force, now composed of about twelve hundred men, pushed on to the Long Island of Holston River, where they were met by four hundred Cherokees, who, brought to their knees by Grant, likewise sought peace from Stephen. Articles were accordingly signed on the nineteenth of November. The North Carolina men returned home; but a portion of the Virginia regiment remained as a winter garrison for Fort Robinson, as the new fort at Long Island was called.