In the spring and summer of 1757 the long expected Indian allies arrived in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May – Cherokees, Catawbas, Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly unable to use them effectively; and in order to provide amusement for them, he directed that they should go “a scalping” with the whites-“a barbarous method of war.”
(Quoted from The Conquest of the Old Southwest, published by the Century Company, New York in 1920. Chapter V by Archibald Henderson (Ph.D.))