Excerpt from Albert James Pickett's History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period (1851): 1788: About this time, a bloody transaction occurred in the territory of the present county of Conecuh.

This party consisted of a Hillabee Indian, who had murdered so many men, that he was called Istillicha, the Man-slayer—a desperate white man, who had fled from the States for the crime of murder, and whom, on account of his activity and ferocity, the Indians called the Cat—and a blood-thirsty negro, named Bob, the property of Sullivan, a Creek trader of the Hillabees.

At midnight, the bloody wretches from the other side, cautiously came over, and, seizing the guns of Kirkland and his men, killed every one of them, except three negroes, one of whom was the servant of the great Chieftain, as before stated.

Upon the journey to that point, Milfort kept him well pinioned, and, every night, secured his legs in temporary stocks, made by cutting notches in pine logs, and clamping them together.

Reaching the creek where poor Kirkland and his men were murdered, Cat was suspended to the limb of a tree, the roots of which were still stained with the blood of the unfortunate colonel and his companions.