- ing a foe outnumbering them more than twenty
to one. Early on the morning of the 25th, however, a messenger brought the news that the Indians had lost heart after the affair at Cavet's and were in full retreat.
In this little band of defenders was the Rev. Samuel Carrick, a Presbyterian minister, afterwards the first President of Blount College, of whose conduct on this occasion there is a pleasing and honorable tradition. It is said that when news of the invasion came he was preparing to bury his wife, who had just died, but, putting aside his grief, and leaving her beloved remains to be buried by the women of the neighborhood, he seized his rifle and hastened to take his post at the front.
A month later the Tennessee militia, led by Sevier, were in the heart of the Indian country, and the battle of Etowah, on the 17th of October, 1793, ended the campaign and cowed the savages.
From this time until the Civil War, Knoxville was outside the current of important public events. From 1792 to 1796, it was the capital of the "Territory South of the River Ohio"; from 1796 to 1811, except for a little while in 1807, it was the capital of Tennessee.
