Epilogue: Toward Augusta

Abstract

Meanwhile the Carpenter’s rivals were still trying to outflank him. In November 1761, while Occonostota took himself off to Louisiana, Standing Turkey returned to the Virginian camp- There he invited Byrd’s successor, Adam Stephen, to send an officer to put the peace terms before the whole Chora council. Stephen sent Ensign Henry Timherlake, who luckily for us published a memoir of his subsequent adventures in I 765.¹ With his servant, interpreter and a sergeant called Thomas Sumter, he was a witness to the still disturbed and anxious state of mind among the Overhill Cherokees. He went on to chronicle a Cherokee mission to Virginia, which became a colourful embassy to London in the summer of 1762,² These events, while essentially footnotes to the peace concluded at Charleston, were part of a complex process of reconciliation which led on to the great Congress of Augusta In the following year.