The Cherokee–American wars, also known as the Chickamauga Wars, were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles in the Old Southwest from 1776 to 1794 between the Cherokee and American settlers on the frontier. Most of the events took place in the Upper South region. While the fighting stretched across the entire period, there were extended periods with little or no action.
The Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe, whom some earlier historians called "the Savage Napoleon", and his warriors, and other Cherokee fought alongside warriors from several other tribes, most often the Muscogee in the Old Southwest and the Shawnee in the Old Northwest. During the Revolutionary War, they also fought alongside British troops, Loyalist militia, and the King's Carolina Rangers against the rebel colonists, hoping to expel them from their territory.
Open warfare broke out in the summer of 1776 in the Overmountain settlements of the Washington District, mainly those along the Watauga, Holston, Nolichucky, and Doe rivers in East Tennessee, as well as the colonies (later states) of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. It eventually spread to settlements along the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee and in Kentucky.
The wars can be divided into two phases. The first phase took place from 1776 to 1783, in which the Cherokee fought as allies of the Kingdom of Great Britain against the American colonies. The Cherokee War of 1776 encompassed the entirety of the Cherokee nation. At the end of 1776, the only militant Cherokee were those who migrated with Dragging Canoe to the Chickamauga towns and became known as the "Chickamauga Cherokee". The second phase lasted from 1783 to 1794. The Cherokee served as proxies of the Viceroyalty of New Spain against the recently formed United States of America. Because they migrated westward to new settlements initially known as the "Five Lower Towns", referring to their location in the Piedmont, these people became known as the Lower Cherokee. This term was used well into the 19th century. The Chickamauga ended their warfare in November 1794 with the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse.
In 1786, Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, a major war chief of the Iroquois, had organized the Western Confederacy of tribes to resist American settlement in Ohio Country. The Lower Cherokee were founding members and fought in the Northwest Indian War that resulted from this conflict. The Northwest Indian War ended with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
The conclusion of the Indian wars enabled the settlement of what had been called "Indian territory" in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and culminated in the first trans-Appalachian states, Kentucky in 1792 and Ohio in 1803.
Prelude (1763–75)
The French and Indian War and the related European theater conflict known as the Seven Years' War laid many of the foundations for the conflict between the Cherokee and the American settlers on the frontier. These tensions on the frontier broke out into open hostilities with the advent of the American Revolution.
Aftermath of the French and Indian War
The action of the French and Indian War in North America included the Anglo-Cherokee War, lasting 1758–1761. British forces under General James Grant destroyed a number of Cherokee towns, which were never reoccupied. Kituwa was abandoned, and its former residents migrated west. They took up residence at Mialoquo, called Great Island Town, on the Little Tennessee River among the Overhill Cherokee. At the end of this conflict, the Cherokee signed the Treaty of Long-Island-on-the-Holston with the Colony of Virginia (1761) and the Treaty of Charlestown with the Province of South Carolina (1762). Conocotocko (Standing Turkey), the First Beloved Man during the conflict, was replaced by Attakullakulla, who was pro-British.
Having concluded the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to settle the European conflict, the British hoped to maintain peace in the colonies and were surprised with the outbreak of Pontiac's War in the north soon thereafter. In response, King George III hastened to issue the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in an effort to impose a boundary between the native tribes and encroaching colonists. The proclamation prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, at least temporarily, but was widely resented by the colonists.
Treaties and land cession
Once they were able to end hostilities with Pontiac's confederation, the British refocused their attention to settling treaties that could resolve land claims with tribes across the colonies. The two Superintendents for Indian Affairs for the northern and southern colonies contemporaneously negotiated the Treaty of Hard Labour with the Cherokee and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois in 1768. The Cherokee were initially to retain their lands west of the Kanawha River, from its confluence with the Ohio to its headwaters, with the boundary continuing south to Spanish Florida.
However, colonists in the Cherokee region continued to ignore the treaty line, in part because Fort Stanwix promulgated a boundary in the north that simply continued west along the Ohio. To further adjust the boundary, John Stuart, as Superintendent for Southern Indian Affairs, negotiated a second treaty with the Cherokee in 1770, the Treaty of Lochaber. This surrendered their remaining claims in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky and protected colonists north of the Holston River, in the region of today's Tennessee-Virginia border.
Early colonial settlements
The earliest colonial settlement in the vicinity of what became Upper East Tennessee was Sapling Grove (Bristol). This initial North-of-Holston settlement was founded by Evan Shelby, who first entered the area as early as 1765, but "purchased" the land in 1768 from John Buchanan. Jacob Brown began another settlement on the Nolichucky River, and John Carter another in what became known as Carter's Valley (between Clinch River and Beech Creek), both in 1771. Following the Battle of Alamance in 1771, James Robertson led a group of some twelve or thirteen Regulator families from North Carolina to the Watauga River. On May 8, 1772, the settlers on the Watauga and on the Nolichucky signed the Watauga Compact to form the Watauga Association.
Each of the groups thought they were within the territorial limits of the colony of Virginia. After a survey proved their mistake, Alexander Cameron, Deputy Superintendent for Indian Affairs, ordered them to leave. Attakullakulla, First Beloved Man (Principal Chief) of the Cherokee, interceded on their behalf. The settlers were allowed to remain, provided no additional people joined them.
In 1769, developers and land speculators planned to start a new colony called Vandalia in the territory ceded by the Cherokee. Plans for that fell through, however, and Virginia annexed it as the District of West Augusta in 1774. On June 1, 1773, the Cherokee and the Muskogee ceded their claims to 2 million acres in the northern sector of the Georgia colony, in return for the cancellation of their debts. Most of the Muskogee refused to recognize the treaty, and the British government rejected it.
Boone party massacre
In Sept. 1773, Daniel Boone led one of the first settler's expeditions through the fabled Cumberland Gap route to establish a temporary settlement inside the hunting grounds of modern-day Kentucky. There were about 50 settlers in the group. The Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and some Cherokee attacked a scouting and forage party, which included Boone's son James. James Boone and Henry Russell, son of William Russell, a compatriot of Daniel Boone, were captured by the Native Americans and ritually tortured to death. The settlement attempt was abandoned. When word got back to Virginia, the colonists led by Lord Dunmore himself retaliated with Dunmore's War (1774) which was conducted mostly against Shawnee raiders from north of the Ohio.
The Cherokee and the Muskogee were active also, mainly confining themselves to small raids on the backcountry settlements of the Carolinas and Georgia.
Henderson Purchase (1775)
On March 17, 1775, a group of North Carolina speculators led by Richard Henderson negotiated the extra-legal Treaty of Watauga at Sycamore Shoals with the older Overhill Cherokee leaders; Oconostota and Attakullakulla, the most prominent, ceded the claim of the Cherokee to the Kentucky lands. The Transylvania Land Company believed it was gaining ownership of the land, not realizing that other tribes, such as the Lenape, Shawnee, and Chickasaw, also claimed these lands for hunting.
Dragging Canoe, headman of Great Island Town and son of Attakullakulla, refused to go along with the deal. He told the North Carolina men, "You have bought a fair land, but there is a cloud hanging over it; you will find its settlement dark and bloody". This utterance gave rise to the contentious epithet for Kentucky as the dark and bloody ground. The phrase became a metaphor for the entire struggle for the Southern frontier. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina repudiated the Watuga treaty, and Henderson fled to avoid arrest. George Washington also spoke out against it. The Cherokee appealed to John Stuart, the Indian Affairs Superintendent, for help, which he had provided on previous such occasions, but the outbreak of the American Revolution intervened.
Henderson and frontiersmen thought the outbreak of the Revolution superseded the judgments of the royal governors. The Transylvania Company began recruiting settlers for the region they had "purchased". In 1776, the Virginia General Assembly prohibited further settlement, and in 1778, declared the Transylvania compact void.
Revolutionary War phase: Cherokee War of 1776
During the Revolutionary War, the Cherokee not only fought against the settlers in the Overmountain region, and later in the Cumberland Basin, defending against territorial settlements, they also fought as allies of Great Britain against American patriots. British strategy was focused on the North, and not so much on the backwoods settlements, especially those in the west. The Cherokee, therefore, were on their own, except for supplies from British ports on the coast and some joint operations in South Carolina.
Flight of the Loyalists
As tensions rose, Loyalist John Stuart, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, was besieged by a mob at his house in Charleston and had to flee for his life. His first stop was St. Augustine in East Florida.
Another noted Loyalist later associated with the Cherokee, Thomas Brown, was not nearly so fortunate. In his home of Brownsborough, Georgia, near Augusta, he was assaulted by a crowd of the Sons of Liberty, tied to a tree, roasted with fire, scalped, tarred, and feathered. After his escape, he took up residence among the Seminole commanding his East Florida Rangers, who fought with them and some of the Lower Muskogee.
From St. Augustine, Stuart sent his deputy, Alexander Cameron, and his brother Henry to Mobile to obtain short-term supplies and arms for the Cherokee. Dragging Canoe took a party of 80 warriors to provide security for the pack train. He met Henry Stuart and Cameron (whom he had adopted as a brother) at Mobile on March 1, 1776. He asked how he could help the British against their rebel subjects, and for help with the illegal settlers. The two men told him to wait for regular troops to arrive before taking any action.
When the two arrived at Chota, Henry Stuart sent out letters to the frontier settlers. He informed them that they were illegally on Cherokee land and gave them 40 days to leave. In an exercise of propaganda, people sympathetic to the Revolution forged a letter to indicate a large force of regular troops, plus Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee, was on the march from Pensacola and planning to pick up reinforcements from the Cherokee. The forged letters alarmed the settlers, who began gathering together in closer, fortified groups, building stations (small forts), and otherwise preparing for an attack.
Visit from the northern tribes
In May 1776, partly at the behest of Henry Hamilton, the British governor in Detroit, the Shawnee chief Cornstalk led a delegation from the northern tribes (Shawnee, Lenape, Iroquois, Ottawa and others) to the southern tribes. He traveled to Chota to meet with the southern tribes (Cherokee, Muscogee, Chickasaw, Choctaw) about fighting with the British against their common enemy. Cornstalk called for united action against those they called the "Long Knives", the squatters who settled and remained in Kain-tuck-ee, or, as the settlers called it, Transylvania. At the close of his speech, Cornstalk offered his war belt, and Dragging Canoe accepted it. Dragging Canoe also accepted belts from the Ottawa and the Iroquois.
To prepare themselves for the coming campaign, the Overhill Cherokee began raiding into Kentucky, often with the Shawnee. Before the northern delegation had left, Dragging Canoe led a small war party into Kentucky and returned with four scalps to present to Cornstalk before they departed. In another raid, a war party led by Hanging Maw, captured three teenage settler girls, Jemima Boone and Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, on July 14 but lost them three days later to a rescue party led by Daniel Boone, father of Jemima, and Richard Callaway, father of Elizabeth and Frances.
First Cherokee campaigns
In late June 1776, war parties from the Lower Towns began attacking the frontier of South Carolina. On July 1, the Out, Middle, and Valley Towns sent out war parties raiding the frontiers settlements of North Carolina east of the Blue Ridge coming down the Catawba River. Meanwhile, traders warned the Overmountain settlers of the impending attacks from the Overhill Towns. They had come from Chota bearing word from Nancy Ward, the Beloved Woman (leader or Elder). The Cherokee offensive proved to be disastrous for the attackers.
On July 3, a small war party of Cherokee besieged a small fort on the North Carolina frontier. The garrison managed to keep from being overrun until a large body of militia arrived in the rear of besiegers, who then retreated.
A 190-strong war party of Cherokee and Loyalist partisans dressed as Cherokee attacked the large fort on the South Carolina frontier known as Lindley's Station. Its 150-man Patriot garrison had just finished building it the day before. After repulsing the attack, the Patriots gave chase, killing two Loyalists and capturing ten, but inflicting no casualties on the Cherokee.