The Cherokee War unfolded across the backcountry frontier in 1776. With an estimated 3,000 musket-armed warriors, the Cherokee Nation launched major attacks on South Carolina settlements on July 1, and fighting continued through late summer and early fall. Violence and retaliation spread along the frontier from Virginia to Georgia.
In late June 1776, Nicholas Cabell and his minutemen marched south, traveling along the James River to Lynch’s Ferry. Illness delayed the company there before they were sent on toward Big Catawba and the skirmish near Big Island Flats, reportedly under Captain James Thompson. A related record notes that William Cabell paid £5.3 for a rifle and blanket supplied for the unit during the Cherokee expedition on July 20, 1776.
An account of the fighting near Big Island Flats was published in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg) on August 2, 1776. The report describes roughly 170 militia, alerted by scouts that Cherokee and Creek forces were moving into the settlements, marching out and fighting two engagements. The militia claimed it avoided being surrounded, found 13 opponents dead on the field, captured plunder and guns, and warned that larger numbers might be coming, urging reinforcements.
Nicholas Cabell was back home in Amherst by October 1776.