Georgia Genealogical Magazine
Summer/Fall 1994

In 1837 one John Webb appeared before a judge in Newton Co GA and made application for a Revolutionary War pension.

"The declarant further states that on about 25 August 1778,
an attack upon Fort Nail (in which this declarant then was engag-
ed in its defence) was made by the Cherokee Indians in which
attack they were unsuccessful & after having stolen a number of
horses they retired having taken the first and the only horse
which this declarant then owned. Said Indians also wounded one
Sampson Bunn and killed nine milk cows and cut out their tongues.
On 4 November 1778 said Cherokee Indians again attacked fort
Nail where this declarant was stationed. The Indians wounded one
THOMAS MOFFIT and took and carried away captive a little nephew
of this declarant by the name of Claiborne Bellamy."
Fort Nail was on the Broad River in Wilkes Co GA. A history of Georgia, however, suggests that it may have been the Creeks rather than the Cherokees who attacked in late 1778.

American Revolution in Georgia
1763-1789
Kenneth Coleman
University of Georgia Press
1958

[pg 113][Military Activities 1776-1778]
In the summer of 1776 the Cherokees began troubles, known as
the Cherokee War, on the Carolina frontier. The British tried to
get the Creeks to help the Cherokees; the Americans tried to pre-
vent this, and few Creeks helped the Cherokees. Actual hostilities
began between the Cherokees and South Carolina. The Continen-
tal Congress requested Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia to
help South Carolina. Georgia militia around Augusta was already
mobilized and some of it or state troops participated in the war,
but most of the fighting was done by the other states. Georgia par-
ticipated in the treaty of De Witt's Corner, which ended the war,
on May 20, 1777. The defeated Cherokees gave little additional
trouble throughout the Revolution.

[pg 114][Military Activities 1776-1778]
While Galphin and his colleagues were working so hard to main-
tain Creek peace, the people in upcountry Georgia were trying
to begin a Creek war and in late summer almost succeeded in per-
suading the assembly to declare a war that the state could not pos-
sibly have won without outside help. At the request of General
Howe, the Continental Congress urged the Georgia Assembly to
try to cultivate Indian peace and to punish the people who sought
a war with the Creeks. Throughout the fall and winter there
were frontier incidents but no major trouble. In the summer of
1778 the Creeks were reported willing to settle their differences,
but in August twenty whites were killed in Wilkes County. Geor-
gia and South Carolina militia were called out for the expected
war, but an uneasy peace was restored for the winter.