Often the Chickamauga, under the leadership of Dragging Canoe, would hide in ambush for weeks between Cumberland Gap and Crab Orchard, a distance of . They would not attack large groups but wait for weaker ones who were not able to defend themselves. More than 100 men, women and children were killed in the fall of 1784 along the Wilderness Road. Many families, even in ice and snow, crossed the creeks and rivers without shoes or stockings; they often had no money and few clothes. They lived off the land by hunting in the woods and by fishing in the streams.