Most Americans picture the Revolution as redcoats versus minutemen, but in the South Carolina upcountry of 1775, the war was a civil war within a civil war. The patriot Council of Safety in Charles Town controlled the lowcountry. The upcountry, lawless and scattered, was thick with 'King's men' who saw no reason to rebel against a Crown that had given them land. Both sides wanted the Cherokees on their side. Both promised gunpowder and lead. In October, the patriots sent 1,000 pounds of powder and 2,000 pounds of lead westward as a gift. A loyalist force under Patrick Cunningham intercepted the wagon train and took the lot. The shipment was meant for hunting, the patriots said. The loyalists believed otherwise.

Colonel Richard Richardson raised an overwhelming force in response, perhaps 5,000 militiamen, and marched them up-country to break loyalist strength. By late December most of the loyalist leaders had been captured. Cunningham and the last holdouts retreated into Cherokee territory near what is now Greenville County. On December 21, Richardson sent 1,300 men under Major William 'Danger' Thomson to finish the job. Thomson marched through the night, twenty-five miles in cold rain mixed with snow flurries, and at dawn on December 22 his men nearly encircled the camp before the loyalists realized what was happening. The fight was brief. Only five or six loyalists were killed. The patriots took 130 prisoners and recovered the stolen munitions. What followed turned the engagement into legend: an unusual heavy snowstorm rolled in the next day, catching militiamen who had been called up on short notice without tents or warm clothing. Some men were permanently injured by frostbite. Soldiers afterward simply called the whole episode the Snow Campaign.

Richardson believed the upcountry was now pacified. He was wrong. The Cherokees, watching the patriots seize munitions promised to them, soon joined the loyalists in a brutal frontier war that would scar South Carolina for the next eight years. The exact site of the cane brake skirmish has been lost to time, though it is known to lie near the Reedy River, roughly seven miles southwest of Simpsonville. A state historical marker on Fork Shoals Road points to the general area. The cane brakes themselves are gone. So is the trail Thomson's men marched through the freezing rain. What remains is the story of an old man without his breeches, a column of soldiers betrayed by burning bamboo, and a snowstorm that did more damage than the battle itself.