to the area. Montgomery's approachto Indian warfare: no male prisoners, but spare women and small children. The war did notgo well for the British. After burning several abandoned lower Cherokee towns,Montgomery met with ambush and defeat when he attempted to push deeper intoCherokee territory. After a long siege, Fort Loudon in eastern Tennessee fell duringAugust, and the garrison was massacred. In early 1761, the incompetent Montgomery wasreplaced by Colonel James Grant. Ignoring Cherokee attempts to make peace, Grantenlisted the help of scouts in June, and soon afterwards his 2,600 man army captured 15middle Cherokee towns and destroyed the food the Cherokee needed for the comingwinter. Faced with starvation if the war continued, the Cherokee signed a treaty with theSouth Carolina in September that ceded most of their eastern lands in the Carolinas. Asecond treaty was signed with Virginia in November. The Cherokee maintained their partof the agreement and did not participate in the Pontiac uprising (1763) but did sufferanother smallpox epidemic that year. They still benefited somewhat when the rebellionforced the stunned British government to temporarily halt all new settlement west of theAppalachians. Within a few years, colonial demands forced the British to reverse thispolicy, and begin negotiations with the Iroquois. Land cessions by the Iroquois at the FortStanwix (1768) opened large sections west of the Appalachians to settlement. Theirgenerosity also included land in West Virginia, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky claimedby the Cherokee, and this forced the British to negotiate new boundaries with theCherokee at the Treaty of Hard Labor (1768). As white settlers poured across the mountains, the Cherokee tried once again tocompensate themselves with territory taken by war with a neighboring tribe. This timetheir intended victim was the Chickasaw, but this was a mistake. Anyone who tried to takesomething from the Chickasaw regre...
