Chickamauga wars

The Chickamauga wars (1776–1794) were a series of back-and-forth raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles, that were a continuation of the Cherokee struggle against the encroachment into their territory by American frontiersmen from the British colonies which had broken out into open warfare in 1776 between the Cherokee led by Dragging Canoe (called the Chickamauga or Chickamauga-Cherokee by colonials) and frontier settlers along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky rivers and in Carter's Valley in East Tennessee and those along the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee and in Kentucky, as well as the colonies (later states) of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The Chickamauga fought alongside and in conjunction with Indians from a number of other tribes, and with support, at various times, from the French, the British, and the Spanish. It is important to note that there was never at any time a separate tribe called "Chickamauga", which was merely a term used by the Americans to distinguish between the followers of Dragging Canoe and those abiding by the peace treaties of 1777, using their location to identify them as they did the "Upper" or "Overhill" Cherokee, the "Lower" Cherokee, the "Hill" Cherokee, and the "Valley" Cherokee.

Prelude

In the aftermath of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), that part of France’s Louisiana Territory east of the Mississippi went to the British along with Canada, while Louisiana west of the Mississippi went to Spain in exchange for Florida going to Britain, which divided it into East Florida and West Florida. Mindful of the recent war, the British government prohibited settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, laying the foundation of one of the major irritants leading to the Revolution. The Cherokee part in that conflict, known as the Anglo-Cherokee War, had lasted from 1758 to 1761, led by Oconostota of Chota (Itsati), Attakullakulla, and Ostenaco of Keowee (Kuwahiyi), with the center of Cherokee pro-French activity being in Great Tellico (Talikwa).

The former site of the Coosa chiefdom during the time of the Spanish explorations in the 16th century, long deserted, was subsequently reoccupied in 1758 by a Muskogee contingent under a leader named Big Mortar in support of his pro-French Cherokee allies and as a step toward an alliance of Muskogee, Cherokee, Shawnee, Chickasaw, and Catawba; Big Mortar later rose to be the leading chief of the Muskogee the year after the war's official end. John Stuart, Southern Superintendent for Indian Affairs out of Charlestown, South Carolina, was the main contact of the Cherokee with the British government, mostly through his deputy, Alexander Cameron, who lived among them.

After Pontiac’s War (1763-1764), in which some Cherokee also took part, the Iroquois Confederacy ceded to the British government its claims to the hunting grounds between the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, known to them and other Indians as Kain-tuck-ee (Kentucky), to which several other tribes north and south also lay claim, in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The land in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, meanwhile, later known to the fledgling independent government as the Northwest Territory, were planned as a British colony that was to be called Charlotiana. These events initiated much of the conflict which followed in the years ahead. In fact, a few small warbands of Cherokee continued to operate against the British in Kentucky, the Ohio Valley, and Great Lakes region throughout the intervening years between the Anglo-Cherokee War and the American Revolution.

Wikisourcepar|Watauga Petition Following the Battle of Alamance in 1771, which brought their Regulator movement to an end, many North Carolinians refused to take the new oath of allegiance to the Royal Crown and withdrew from the province. One of these, James Robertson, led a group of some twelve or thirteen Regulator families from near where present day Raleigh, North Carolina now stands into the west. Believing they were in the territorial limits of the colony of Virginia, they settled on the banks of the Watauga River. After a survey proved their mistake, Deputy Superintendent Cameron ordered them to leave. However, certain Cherokee leaders in the region interceded on their behalf, and they were allowed to remain, provided there was no further encroachment.

In 1772, Robertson and the pioneers who had eventually settled in Northeast Tennessee (along the Watauga River, the Doe River, the Holston River, and the Nolichucky Rivers) met at Sycamore Shoals to establish an independent regional government known as the Watauga Association. [http://www.tcarden.com/tree/ensor/Watag.html "Watauga Petition". Ensor Family Pages.]

In response to the first attempt to establish a settlement inside the hunting grounds of Kentucky by a group under Daniel Boone, the Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo, and some Cherokee attacked a scouting and forage party that included Boone’s son, beginning what is known as Dunmore's War (1773–1774).

One year later, in 1775, a group of North Carolina speculators led by Richard Henderson negotiated the Treaty of Watauga at Sycamore Shoals with the older Overhill Cherokee leaders, chief of whom were Oconostota and Attakullakulla, surrendering the claim of the Cherokee to the Kain-tuck-ee lands and supposedly giving the Transylvania Land Company ownership thereof in spite of claims to the region by other tribes such as the Shawnee and Chickasaw.

Dragging Canoe, chief of Great Island and son of Attakullakulla, refused to go along with the deal and 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”. The Watauga treaty was quickly repudiated by the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, however, and Henderson had to flee to avoid arrest.

American Revolution begins

In 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, Delaware, Iroquois, Ottawa, others) to the southern tribes (Cherokee, Muskogee, Chickasaw, Choctaw), and met with the Cherokee leaders at Chota (Eckhert says Muscle Shoals), calling for united action against those they called the Long Knives, the squatters who settled and remained in Kain-tuck-ee (Ganda-gi in Cherokee), or, as the settlers called it, Transylvania. At the close of his speech, he offered his war belt, and Dragging Canoe ("Tsiyugunisini" in Cherokee) accepted it, along with Abraham of Chilhowee (Tsulawiyi). Dragging Canoe also accepted belts from the Ottawa and the Iroquois, while The Raven of Chota accepted the belt from the Delaware.

The plan was for Middle, Out, and Valley Towns of North Carolina to attack South Carolina, the Lower Towns of western South Carolina and North Georgia (led by Alexander Cameron, British agent to the Cherokee) to attack Georgia, and the Overhill Towns along the lower Little Tennessee and Hiwassie rivers to attack Virginia and North Carolina. In the Overhill campaign, Dragging Canoe lead a force to the Holston settlements, Abraham to the Watauga and the Nolichucky, and The Raven to Carter’s Valley. The squatting settlers, however, had been forewarned of the attack by traders who'd come to them from Chota bearing warning from the Beloved Woman (female equivalent of Beloved Man, the Cherokee title for a leader) Nancy Ward. Having thus been betrayed, the Cherokee offensive proved to be disastrous for the attackers, particularly those going up against the Holston settlements, with Dragging Canoe himself having his leg shattered by a bullet and his brother Little Owl incredibly surviving after being hit by eleven bullets.

Response from the colonials in the aftermath was swift and overwhelming. North Carolina sent 2400 militia to scour the Oconaluftee and Tuckasegee Rivers and the headwaters of the Little Tennessee and Hiwassie, South Carolina sent 1800 men to the Savannah, and Georgia sent 200 to the Chattahoochee and Tugaloo. In all, they destroyed more than fifty towns, burned their houses and food, destroyed their orchards, slaughtered livestocks, and killed hundreds, as well as putting survivors on the slave auction block.

In the meantime, Virginia sent a large force, accompanied by North Carolina volunteers, under William Christian, to the lower Little Tennessee valley. Dragging Canoe wanted to send the women, children, and old below the Hiwassie, burn the towns, and ambush the Virginians at the French Broad River, but Oconostota, Attakullakulla, and the rest of the older chiefs decided against that path.

The move to the Chickamauga area

Dragging Canoe and other leaders, including Ostenaco, gathered those Cherokee of like mind from the Overhill, Valley, and Hill towns, and migrated to what is now the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area. Christian's force, therefore, found Great Island, Citico, and Great Tellico deserted, with only the older leaders who had opposed the younger ones and their war remaining. This being the case, Christian limited the destruction in the Overhill Towns to the burning of the three deserted towns.

Following the suggestion of Alexander Cameron, they established what was later known as the town of Chickamauga (Tsikamagi) under Big Fool at the place where the Great Indian Warpath crossed the Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek), with Dragging Canoe himself living there, for which reason those of his faction were called the "Chickamaugas" by the whites.

The British commissary John McDonald already lived and had a trading post across the river from Chickamauga town, providing a link with Henry Stuart, brother of John, in the West Florida capital of Pensacola. Alexander Cameron, deputy superintendent and blood brother to Dragging Canoe, accompanied him to Chickamauga, but later transferred to the territory of the Upper Muskogee towns to represent British interests there.

In addition to Chickamauga, the so-called dissidents set up three other settlements on the Chickamauga River: Toqua (Dakwayi), at the mouth, Opelika, a few kilometers upstream from Chickamauga town, and Buffalo Town (Yunsayi) at the headwaters of the river in northwest Georgia. Other towns were Cayuga on Hiwassie Island; Ooltewah (Ultiwa), under Ostenaco on Ooltewah (Wolftever) Creek; Sawtee (Itsati), under Dragging Canoe's brother Little Owl on Laurel (North Chickamauga) Creek; Citico (Sitiku), along the creek of the same name; Chatanuga (Tsatanugi; not the same as the later city) at the foot of Lookout Mountain in what is now St. Elmo; Tuskegee (Taskigi) under Bloody Fellow on Williams' Island; and Stecoyee (Stikayi), in Lookout Valley. It is important to note, though, that neither they nor the other Cherokee ever considered themselves anything other than Cherokee.

The land used by the Chickamauga Cherokee was once the traditional location of many former towns of the Muskogee, and according to Cherokee legend came into the possession of the Cherokee after the Battle of Talliwa in 1755. However, the Muskogee tribes had actually withdrawn much earlier to leave a buffer zone between themselves and the Cherokee. In fact, when the colony of Carolina first began trading with them in the late 1600s, the westernmost settlements of the Cherokee were the twin towns of Great Tellico (Talikwa, same as Tahlequah) and Chatuga (Tsatugi) at the current site of Tellico Plains, Tennessee. The Coosawatie townsite (Kuswatiyi, Cherokee for "Old Coosa Place"), in Cherokee hands since the early 1700’s, occupied but later abandoned only to be reoccupied briefly by the Muskogee as mentioned above, was among the sites settled.

In the meantime, in 1777, the rest of the Cherokee in the Hill, Valley, Lower, and Overhill towns signed the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner with Georgia and South Carolina and the Treaty of Fort Henry with Virginia and North Carolina promising to stay off the warpath, which was supposed to protect them in turn from attack. Neither, however, did anything to halt attacks by frontiersmen from the illegal (under British law) colonies nor stop encroachment onto their lands. In fact, they required those ceasing their war to give up their land in South Carolina and the area of the former Out Towns.

Many Cherokee, resentful of the (largely Scots-Irish) white settlers who were moving into Cherokee lands, and sympathetic to the Chickamauga cause, joined the ranks of Dragging Canoe's followers. In addition, the Cherokee towns of Great Hiwassee (Ayuwasi), Tennessee (Tanasi), Chestowee (Tsistuyi), Ocoee (Ugwahi), and Amohee (Amoyee) in the vicinity of Hiwassie River joined in several operations, as did the Lower Cherokee in the North Georgia towns of Coosawatie (Kusawatiyi), Etowah (Itawa), Ellijay (Elatseyi), Ustanari, etc, who'd been forced there from their previous homes in South Carolina by the Treaty of Dewitts' Corner. The Yuchi living on the upper Chickamauga, Pinelog, and Conasauga Creeks likely provided support as well.

The main targets of Chickamauga Cherokee attacks were settlers (all of whom Dragging Canoe referred to as Virginians) on the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky Rivers, in Carter's Valley, on the Cumberland, and the isolated stations in between, along with ambushes of parties travelling on the Tennessee River. The Chickamauga also ambushed local sections of the many ancient trails that served as "highways" such as the Great Indian Warpath (Mobile to northeast Canada), the Cisca and St. Augustine Trail (St. Augustine to the French Salt Lick at Nashville), the Cumberland Trail (from the Upper Creek Path to the Great Lakes), and the Nickajack Trail (Nickajack to Augusta); later they even stalked the Natchez Trace. However, this did not preclude their attacking targets in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. In addition, they also made forays into western Virginia, Kentucky, and the Ohio country.

Reaction

In 1778–1779, Savannah and Augusta, Georgia, were captured by the British, who supplied Dragging Canoe's band with guns and ammunition, and together they were able to gain control of parts of interior South Carolina and Georgia.

In early 1779, James Robertson of Virginia received warning from Chota that the Chickamauga were going to attack the Holston area. In response, he ordered a counterattack under Evan Shelby and John Montgomery which destroyed the eleven towns in the Chickamauga area and most of their food supply. In the meantime, Dragging Canoe and John McDonald were leading the Chickamauga and fifty Loyalist Rangers in attacks on Georgia and South Carolina.

Upon hearing of the devastation of the towns, the Shawnee sent a delegation to Chickamauga, to which Dragging Canoe, McDonald, and their men, including the Rangers, had returned to find out if the destruction had caused Dragging Canoe's people to lose the will to fight. In response, he held up the war belts he'd accepted when the delegation visited Chota in 1776, and said, "We are not yet conquered". To cement the alliance, the Chickamauga sent nearly a hundred of their warriors north while the Shawnee responded in kind. The Chickamauga towns were soon rebuilt and occupied by their former inhabitants. Dragging Canoe responded to the Shelby expedition with punitive raids on the frontiers of both North Carolina and Virginia.

The Chickasaw were brought into the war when George Rogers Clark and a party of over two hundred built Fort Jefferson and a surrounding settlement near the mouth of the Ohio, inside their hunting grounds. After learning of the trespass, the Chickasaw destroyed the settlement, laid siege to the fort, and began attacking the Kentucky frontier.

Later that year, Robertson and John Donelson traveled overland across country and founded Fort Nashborough at the French Salt Lick (which got its name from having previously been the site of a French outpost called Fort Charleville) on the Cumberland River. It was the first of many such settlements in the Cumberland area, which subsequently became the focus of attacks by all the tribes in the surrounding region.

Early in 1780, Donelson journeyed down the Tennessee with a party that included his family, intending to go across to the mouth of the Cumberland, then upriver to Ft. Nashborough. Eventually, the group did reach its destination, but only after being ambushed near Tuskegee Island and again at the Muscle Shoals, several hundred kilometers downriver.

That summer, the new Indian superintendent, Thomas Brown, planned to have a joint conference between the Chickamauga Cherokee and Muskogee to plan ways to coordinate their attacks, but those plans were forestalled when the Americans made a concerted effort to retake Augusta, where he had his headquarters. The arrival of a Chickamauga war party, joined by a sizable number or warriors from the Overhill Towns, prevented the capture of both, and they and Brown's East Florida Rangers chased Elijah Clarke's army into the arms of John Sevier, wreaking havoc on rebellious settlements along the way. This set the stage for the Battle of King's Mountain, in which loyalist militia under Patrick Ferguson moved south trying to encircle Clarke and were defeated by a force of 900 frontiersmen under Sevier and William Campbell referred to as the Overmountain Men.

In response, Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition of seven hundred Virginians and North Carolinians against the Chickamuga in December, 1780, under the command of Sevier. It met a Cherokee war party at Boyd's Creek, and after the battle, joined by forces under Arthur Campbell and Joseph Martin, marched against the Overhill towns on the Little Tennessee and the Hiwassie, burning seventeen of them, including Chota. Afterwards, the Overhill leaders withdrew from further active conflict for the time being, though the Hill and Valley Towns continued to harass the frontier.

Migration and expansion

By 1781, Dragging Canoe was working with the Lower Cherokee Towns on the headwaters of the Coosa River, and with the Muskogee, particularly the Upper Muskogee. The Chickasaw, the Shawnee, and the Delaware (who were the first to do so) were repeatedly attacking the Cumberland settlements. Three months after the first Chickasaw attack on the Cumberland, the Chickamauga's first attack came in April of that year, and was what became known as the Battle of the Bluff.

In the fall of that year, the British engineered a coup d'etat of sorts that put The Raven as chief leader of the Overhill Towns in place of the more pacifist Oconostota. For a couple of years, the Overhill Cherokee openly, as they had been doing covertly, supported the efforts of Dragging Canoe and his Chickamauga Cherokee. After that time, however, the other leaders replaced him with another pacifist, known to history as Old Tassel, and Overhill support within their towns once again became covert. Opposition from pacifist leaders, however, never stopped war parties from traversing the territories of any of the town groups, largely because the average Cherokee supported their cause, nor did it stop small war parties of the Overhill Towns from raiding settlements in East Tennessee, mostly those on the Holston.

In September 1782, an expedition under Sevier once again destroyed the towns in the Chickamauga area and those of the Lower Cherokee down to Ustanali, including what he called Vann's Town. Instead of rebuilding as they did before, Dragging Canoe and his fellow leaders chose relocation westward, establishing what whites called the Five Lower Towns downriver from the various natural obstructions in the twenty-six-mile Tennessee River Gorge. Starting just below the foot of Williams (aka Tuskegee or Brown's) Island, these obstructions included the Tumbling Shoals, the Holston Rock, the Kettle (or Suck), the Suck Shoals, the Deadman’s Eddy, the Pot, the Skillet, the Pan, and, finally, the Narrows. Of these, the Suck was the most famous, notorious enough to merit mention even by Thomas Jefferson.

The Five Lower Towns included Running Water (Tanta-ta-rara, at the current Whiteside in Marion County, Tennessee), where Dragging Canoe made his headquarters, Nickajack (Ani-Kusati-yi, or Koasati place), eight kilometers down the Tennessee River in the same county, Long Island (Amayeli Gunahita) on the Tennessee just above the Great Creek Crossing, Crow Town (Kagunyi) on the Tennessee at the mouth of Crow Creek, and Lookout Mountain Town (Atalidandaganuyi) at the current site of Trenton, Georgia. Tuskegee Island Town was reoccupied as a lookout post by a small band of warriors to provide advance warning of invasions, and eventually many other settlements in the area were resettled as well.

Because this was a move into the outskirts of Muskogee territory, Dragging Canoe, knowing such a move might be necessary, had previously sent a delegation under Little Owl to meet with their head chief, Alexander McGillivray, to gain their permission to do so. When the Chickamauga moved their base, so too did the British representatives Cameron and McDonald, making Running Water the center of their efforts throughout the Southeast. Thomas Brown, meanwhile, had switched sides and gone to live in West Tennessee as American agent to the Chickasaw, who were trying to play off the Americans and the Spanish against each other but had little interest in the British. Turtle-at-Home, another of Dragging Canoe's brothers, along with some seventy warriors, headed north to live and fight with the Shawnee.

Cherokee continued to migrate westward to join the Chickamauga, whose ranks were further increased by runaway slaves, white Tories, Muskogee, Koasati, Kaskinampo, Yuchi, Natchez, and Shawnee, as well as a band of Chickasaw living at what was later known as Chickasaw Old Fields across from Guntersville, plus a few Spanish, French, Irish, and Germans. Later Chickamauga major settlements included Willstown (Titsohili) near the later Fort Payne; Turkeytown (Gundigaduhunyi), at the head of the Cumberland Trail where the Upper Creek Path crossed the Coosa River near Centre, Alabama; and Creek Path (Kusanunnahi), near at the intersection of the Great Indian Warpath with the Upper Creek Path at Guntersville. This expansion came about largely because of the influx of Cherokee from North Georgia, who fled the depredations of expeditions such as those of Sevier. Cherokee from the Middle, or Hill, Towns also came, a group of whom established a town named Sawtee (Itsati) at the mouth of South Sauta Creek on the Tennessee. Another town, Coosada, was added when its Koasati and Kaskinampo inhabitants joined Dragging Canoe's confederation.

Another allied settlement was Coldwater at Muscle Shoals, a mixed settlement of Cherokee and Muskogee at the mouth of Coldwater Creek on the Tennessee River, whose warriors, while not actually part of the Chickamauga Cherokee, often fought alongside them. Coldwater was located there because of the Shoals, an obstruction second in difficulty to traverse only to the Tennessee River Gorge. Initially, they got their arms and other supplies from a group of French traders on the Wabash River in the north, some of whom lived among them and fought with them, particularly against the settlements on the Cumberland River. Though this town was destroyed in 1787, it was soon reoccupied with the infamous Doublehead as its leader.

After the Revolution

Eventually, Dragging Canoe realized that the Chickamauga Cherokee could not carry on the fight by themselves, and that the only solution for the various Indian nations to maintain their independence was to unite in an alliance against the Americans. In addition to increasing his ties to McGillivray and the Upper Muskogee, with whom he worked most often and in greatest numbers, he continued to send his warriors to fighting alongside the Shawnee, Choctaw, and Delaware.

In 1783, Dragging Canoe traveled to St. Augustine, the capital of East Florida, to a summit of both southern and northern tribes, calling for a federations of Indians to oppose the Americans and their frontier colonists. A general council of the Cherokee, Muskogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw took place a few months later to follow up, but plans for the federation were cut short, however, by the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

Following the treaty, the Chickamauga Cherokee turned to the Spanish (who still claimed all the territory south of the Cumberland) for support, trading primarily through Pensacola and Mobile. A large part of the reason for this was that fact that the Spanish governor of Louisiana Territory in New Orleans had taken advantage of the British setback to seize those ports. Dragging Canoe maintained relations with the British governor at Detroit, Alexander McKee, through regular diplomatic missions there under his brothers Little Owl and The Badger. Meanwhile, the Chickasaw made a peace treaty with the new United States and never again took up arms against it.

The Cherokee in the Upper, Hill, and Valley Towns also signed a treaty with the new government, the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, but in their case it was a treaty made under duress, the frontier colonials by this time having spread further along the Holston and onto the French Broad. The signatories had hoped that since the treaty guaranteed to them their lands courtesy of the national government that their territory would then be secure from encroachment, but this proved not to be the case. The colonials could now shift military forces to Middle Tennessee in response to increasing frequency of attacks by both Chickamauga Cherokee and Upper Muskogee.

The murder of two Overhill chiefs, Old Tassel (who was replaced by Hanging Maw) and Abraham, while under a flag of truce in the year 1788 during an embassy to the State of Franklin angered the entire Cherokee nation and resulted in those previously reluctant taking the warpath, an increase in hostility that lasted for several months. Doublehead, Old Tassel's brother, was particularly incensed. Dragging Canoe even came in to address the general council, now meeting at Ustanali, highlighting the seriousness of the matter.

In 1788, Joseph Martin, with 500 men, marched to the Chickamauga area, intending to penetrate the edge of the Cumberland Mountains to get to the Five Lower Towns. He sent a detachment to secure the pass over the foot of Lookout Mountain, which was ambushed and routed by a party of Dragging Canoe's warriors, after which the entire force retreated back to White's Fort (now Knoxville). The army of Cherokee warriors Dragging Canoe raised in response reached three thousand in total, split into warbands hundreds strong each.

In return, punishment attacks by the settlers' militia increased. Troops under Sevier destroyed the Valley Towns in North Carolina. At Ustalli, on the Hiwassie, the population had been evacuated by Chickamauga warriors led by Bob Benge, who left a rearguard to ensure their escape. After lighting the town, Sevier and his group pursued its fleeing inhabitants, but were ambushed at the mouth of the Valley River by Benge's party. From there they went to the village of Coota-cloochee and proceeded to burn down its cornfields, but were chased off by 400 warriors led by John Watts (Young Tassel).

John Watts' band fell upon serious misfortune later that year. Wintering at at Flint Creek in Unicoi County, Tennessee, they were surrounded in early January 1789 by a force under John Sevier that was equipped with grasshopper guns. The gunfire from the Cherokee was so intense that Sevier ordered a cavalry charge that led to savage hand-to-hand fighting. Watt's band lost nearly 150 warriors.

In early 1789, a party of Shawnee came from the north, led by Chiksika, a leader contemporary with the famous Blue Jacket and brother of the later leader Tecumseh. Based out of Running Water, where Chiksika's Cherokee wife and daughter had already been living for some time, they participated in and conducted raids and other actions, in some of which Chickamauga warriors participated (most notably Benge). Besides Chiksika's family, the two brothers' other connection to the South lay in their mother being Muskogee. In one of the actions of their band, Chiksika was killed, resulting in Tecumseh becoming leader of the small Shawnee band, and, therefore, one of the leaders among the Chickamauga as well, gaining his first experiences as a leader in warfare. His band remained until late 1790, then returned north.

Starting in 1791, Benge, and his brother The Tail, based at Willstown, began leading attacks against settlers in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Kentucky, often in conjunction with Doublehead and his warriors from Coldwater. Eventually, he became one of the most feared warriors on the frontier. As for Doublehead, he not only counted Cherokee among his followers, but Shawnee, Muskogee, and renegade Chickasaw such as his son-in-law George Colbert, who lived in a sister town at the foot of the Shoals.

The Treaty of Holston, signed in July 1791, required from the Upper Towns more land in return for continued peace because the government proved unable to stop or rollback illegal settlements. However, it also seemed to guarantee Cherokee sovereignty and led the Upper Cherokee chiefs to believe they had the same status as states. In this case, the Chickamauga Cherokee leaders had sent a representative to the talks in Philadelphia, Bloody Fellow, though they never acceded to its provisions because of the numerous points against which Bloody Fellow protested.

Later in the summer, a small delegation of Chickamauga Cherokee under Dragging Canoe's brother Little Owl traveled north to meet with the Indian leaders of the Northwest Indian War, chief among them Blue Jacket of the Shawnee and Little Turtle of the Miami. While they were there, word arrived at Running Water that Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, was planning an invasion against the allied tribes in the north. Dragging Canoe sent a 30-strong war party north under his brother The Badger, where, along with the warriors of Little Owl and Turtle-at-Home they participated in the decisive encounter known as the Battle of the Wabash, the worst defeat inflicted by Native Americans upon the American military, whose body count far surpassed that at the more famous Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

After the battle, Little Owl, The Badger, and Turtle-at-Home returned south with most of the warriors who'd accompanied the first two. The warriors who'd come north years earlier, both with Turtle-at-Home and a few years before, remained in the Ohio region, but the returning warriors brought back a party of thirty Shawnee under the leadership of one known as Shawnee Warrior that frequently operated alongside warriors under Little Owl.

Death of "the savage Napoleon"

Inspired by news of the northern victory, Dragging Canoe embarked on a mission to unite the native people of his area as had Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, visiting the other major tribes in the region. His embassies to the Lower Muskogee and the Choctaw were successful, but the Chickasaw in West Tennessee refused his overtures. Upon his return, which coincided with that of The Glass and Turtle-at-Home from a successful raid on settlements along the Cumberland and in Kentucky, a huge all-night celebration was held at Lookout Mountain Town at which the Eagle Dance was performed in his honor.

By morning, 1 March 1792, Dragging Canoe was dead. A procession of honor carried his body to Running Water, where he was buried. By the time of his death, the resistance of the Chickamauga Cherokee had led to grudging respect from the settlers, as well as the rest of the Cherokee nation. He was even memorialized by Black Fox at the general council of the Upper Towns held in Ustanali the following year.

He was succeeded as leader by John Watts, along with Bloody Fellow and Doublehead, who continued Dragging Canoe's policy of Indian unity, including an agreement with McGillivray of the Upper Muskogee to build joint blockhouses from which warriors of both tribes could operate at the junction of the Tennessee and Clinch Rivers, at Running Water, and at Muscle Shoals. Watts moved his base of operations to Willstown in order to be closer to his Muskogee allies and the Spanish governor of West Florida in Pensacola, Arturo O'Neill, while John McDonald, now Indian affairs superintendent, moved to Turkeytown with his assistant Daniel Ross and their families in order to be closer to their Spanish supply lines. Some of the older chiefs, such as The Glass of Running Water, The Breath of Nickajack, and Dick Justice of Lookout Mountain Town, abstained from active warfare but did nothing to stop the warriors in their towns from taking part in raids and campaigns.

In September 1792, Watts orchestrated a large campaign into the Cumberland region of combined Cherokee and Muskogee forces which included a contingent of cavalry. It was to be a three-pronged attack in which Tahlonteeskee led a force to ambush the Kentucky road and Middle Striker led another to do the same on the Walton road while Watts himself led the main army, made up of 280 Chickamauga, Shawnee, and Muskogee warriors plus cavalry, against a settlement on the Cumberland known as Buchanan's Station. Shawnee Warrior, Talotiskee of the Muskogee, and Dragging Canoe's brother Little Owl died in the encounter. In revenge for this, Benge, Doublehead, and Pumpkin Boy (Doublehead's brother) led a raid into southwestern Kentucky during which their warriors, in an act initiated by Doublehead, ate the enemies they had just killed. Meanwhile, the Muskogee increased their attacks on the Cumberland in both size and frequency.

Shortly after a delegation of Shawnee stopped in Ustanali in 1793, on their way to call on the Muskogee and Choctaw to punish the Chickasaw for joining St. Clair's army in the north, Watts sent envoys to Knoxville, then the capital of the Southwest Territory, to meet with Governor William Blount to discuss terms for peace. However, the party, which included Bob McLemore, Tahlonteeskee, Captain Charley of Running Water, and Doublehead, among several others, was attacked by colonial militia before reaching the capital during a stop at Chota, in which Hanging Maw was wounded while his wife and daughter, along with several others, were killed.

Watts responded by invading the Holston area with one of the largest Indian forces ever seen in the region, over one thousand Cherokee and Muskogee, intending to attack Knoxville itself. On the way, the Cherokee leaders were discussing among themselves whether to kill all the inhabitants of Knoxville, or just the men, James Vann advocating the latter while Doublehead argued for the former. Further on the way, they encountered a small settlement called Cavett's Station. After they had surrounded the place, Benge negotiated with the inhabitants, agreeing that if they surrendered, their lives would be spared. However, after the settlers had walked out, Doublehead's group attacked and killed all of them over the pleas of Benge, though Watts intervened in time to save one young boy, handing him to Vann, who put the boy behind him on his horse and later handed him over to his Muskogee allies for safe-keeping; unfortunately, one of the Muskogee chiefs killed the boy and scalped him a few days later. Because of this incident, Vann called Doublehead "Babykiller" for the remainder of his life; this incident also began a lengthy feud which defined the politics of the early 19th century Cherokee Nation and only ended in 1807 with Doublehead's death at Vann's orders. By this time, tensions among the Cherokee broke out into such vehement arguments that the force broke up, with the main group retiring south.

Sevier countered the invasion with an invasion and occupation of Ustanali, which had been deserted; there was no fighting there other than an indecisive skirmish with a Cherokee-Muskogee scouting party. He and his men then followed the Cherokee-Muskogee force south to the town of Etowah (Itawayi; near the site of present-day Cartersville, Georgia across the Etowah River from the Etowah Indian Mounds), leading to what Sevier called the "Battle of Hightower". His force defeated their opponents soundly, then went on to destroy several Cherokee villages to the west before retiring to Tennessee.

End of the "Chickamauga wars"

In the summer of 1794, a party of Chickamauga Cherokee under Whitemankiller (George Fields) and The Bowl overtook a river party under one William Scott at Muscle Shoals, killing its white passengers, looting its goods, and taking the slaves captive. The incident is notable because its aftermath led to emigration by The Bowl and his warriors westward across the Mississippi and up the St. Francis River, where they stayed and made their homes, becoming the first major group of Cherokee to do so.

In the fall of that year, Thomas Brown sent word from Chickasaw territory to General Robertson of the Mero District, as the Cumberland region was then called, that a party of Muskogee and Cherokee were about to launch attacks all along the river. In response, Robertson sent a detachment of U.S. regular troops, Mero militia, and Kentucky volunteers to the Five Lower Towns under U.S. Army Major James Ore. The group attacked Nickajack without warning, slaughtering many of the inhabitants, including its pacifist chief The Breath, then after torching the houses proceeded upriver to burn Running Water, whose residents had long fled. The actual casualties were lighter than they might have been because the majority of both towns were in Willstown attending a major stickball (similar to lacrosse) game.

The destruction of the two towns combined with the death of Bob Benge in April and the recent defeat of the northern Indians by General "Mad Anthony" Wayne's army at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August of that year, plus the fact that the Spanish could not support the Chickamauga war due to problems they were having with Napoleon in Europe, convinced Watts to end the fighting once and for all. Two months later, the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse finally ended the series of conflicts, which was notable for not requiring any further cession of land other than requiring the Chickamauga, or Lower Cherokee (as they were by then called), to recognize those of the Holston treaty, which led to a period of relative peace into the 19th century, although Doublehead did make one last attack, this time upon Sevier's Station, killing fourteen, while the others were in Philadelphia signing the treaty.

Assessment

Counting the previous two years of all the Cherokee fighting openly as British allies, the Chickamauga Wars lasted nearly twenty years, one of the longest-running conflicts between Indians and the Americans, often overlooked for its length, its importance at the time, and its influence on later Native American leaders (or considering that Cherokee had been involved at least in small numbers in all the conflicts beginning in 1758, that number could be nearly forty years). It was, in fact, because of the continuing hostilities that following the Revolution one of the only two permanent garrisons in the territory of the new country was placed at Fort Southwest Point on Long Island-on-the-Holston, the other being Fort Pitt. No less underrated are Dragging Canoe's abilities as a war leader and diplomat, and even today he is scarcely mentioned in texts dealing with conflicts between "Americans" and "Indians".

Aftermath

Following the peace treaty, there was no further separation of the main Cherokee and the so-called Chickamauga Cherokee. In fact, the leaders of the former Chickamauga were dominant in national affairs. When the national government of all the Cherokee was organized, the first three persons to hold the office of Principal Chief, Little Turkey, Black Fox, and Pathkiller, had previously served as warriors under Dragging Canoe, as had the first two national Speakers, Doublehead and Turtle-at-Home.

Many of the former Chickamauga warriors returned to several of the original settlements of the Chickamauga, some of which had already been reoccupied, establishing new towns in the area as well, plus several in North Georgia aside from moving into those previously established by those forcibly removed from the Lower Towns (such as Etowah), and joining with the remnant of the Overhill towns on the Little Tennessee River were referred to as the Upper Towns, with their center at Ustanali in Georgia and with the former Chickamaugas James Vann and his proteges The Ridge (formerly known as Pathkiller) and Charles R. Hicks as their top leaders, along with John Lowery, George Lowery, Dick Justice, The Glass, Bob McLemore, Tahlonteeskee (brother of Doublehead), John Jolly (his nephew and adopted father of Sam Houston), John Brown, and others. The majority of the former Chickamauga, however, remained in the towns they inhabited in 1794, with their seat at Willstown, and were known as the Lower Towns. These former warriors became the strongest proponents of acculturation and what Americans referred to as "civilization". The settlements of the Cherokee remaining in the towns of western North Carolina were known as the Hill Towns, with their seat at Qualla, and the Valley Towns, with their seat at Tuskquitee, were more traditional, as was the Upper Town of Etowah, notable for being inhabited mostly by full-bloods.

In August 1795, Gen. Wayne sent a message to Long Hair, leader of the Cherokee who remained in the Ohio country, that they should come in and sue for peace as had all the other northern tribes following the defeat of the northern confederacy at Fallen Timbers. In response, Long Hair replied that all of them would return south as soon as they finished the harvest. However, they did not all do so; at least one, named Shoe Boots, stayed in the area until 1803, so it’s likely others did as well.

The Muskogee-Chickasaw War, begun at the behest of the Shawnee mentioned above, ended in a truce negotiated by the U.S. government that same year.

By the time of the visit to the area by John Norton (a Mohawk of Cherokee and Scottish ancestry) in 1809–1810, the former Chickamaugas were among the most acculturated members of the Cherokee nation. James Vann, for instance, was a plantation owner with over a hundred slaves and one of the wealthiest men east of the Mississippi. Norton became a personal friend of Turtle-at-Home, and it was he who informed Norton that the so-called "Chickamauga" had never been a separate people. At the time of Norton’s visit, Turtle-at-Home himself owned a ferry on the Federal Road between Nashville and Athens, Georgia, where he lived at Nickajack, which had itself spread not only down the Tennessee but across it to the north as well.

When pressure began to be applied to the Cherokee Nation for its members to emigrate westward across the Mississippi, former leaders of the Chickamauga Cherokee, such as Tahlonteeskee, John Jolly, Richard Fields, John Brown (of Brown’s Tavern, Ferry, and Landing), John McLemore, John Rogers, and Tatsi (also known as Captain Dutch) spearheaded the way, following the earlier path of The Bowl; The Bowl himself and Richard Fields eventually established a Cherokee colony in Texas. Likewise, the leaders of the Lower Towns proved to be the strongest advocates of that course of action, even as they were most bitterly opposed by those former Chickamauga leaders and their offspring who led the Upper Towns. Many of the latter, such as Major Ridge (as The Ridge had been known since the Creek War), his son John Ridge, his nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie, ultimately switched sides to join westward emigration advocates John Walker, Jr., David Vann, and Andrew Ross (brother of then Principal Chief John Ross) leading to the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 and the Cherokee Removal in 1838.

Tecumseh's return and later events

Before beginning his great campaign in 1811, Tecumseh returned to the South hoping to gain the support of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, and Cherokee for his crusade to drive back the Americans and re-establish the old ways. He was accompanied by representatives from the Shawnee, Muskogee, Kickapoo, and Sioux nations. Tecumseh's exhortations in the towns of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Lower Muskogee found no traction, the exception being the Upper Muskogee, and even then only among a sizable faction of the younger warriors, the Upper Muskogee headman, The Big Warrior, having repudiated Tecumseh before the assembly. There was so much opposition from the Cherokee delegation under former Chickamauga warrior The Ridge that visited one of his councils at Tuckabatchee that Tecumseh cancelled plans to visit the Cherokee Nation. However, throughout his time in the South, he was accompanied by an enthusiastic escort of 47 Cherokee (and 19 Choctaw), who presumably went north when he left the area.

Tecumseh's mission did spark a religious revival which is referred to by Mooney as the "Cherokee Ghost Dance" movement and was led by another former Chickamauga, the prophet Tsali of Coosawatie, who later moved to the western North Carolina mountains where he was executed for violently resisting Removal in 1838. In Tsali's meeting with the national council at Ustanali, many of the leaders were moved enough to support his cause, until The Ridge spoke even more eloquently in rebuttal, calling instead for support for the Americans in the coming war with the British and Tecumseh's alliance. This ultimately resulted in over five hundred Cherokee warriors volunteering to serve under Andrew Jackson in helping put down their former Upper Muskogee allies in the Creek War, but only after the Lower Muskogee under William Mcintosh, who opposed the war of the “Red Sticks”, asked for their help.

A few years later, a troop of Cherokee cavalry under Major Ridge attached to the 1400-strong contingent of Lower Muskogee warriors under Mcintosh accompanied the force of U.S. regulars, Georgia militia, and Tennessee volunteers into Florida for action in the First Seminole War against the Seminoles, refugee Red Sticks, and escaped slaves fighting against the U.S.A.

Following that war, Cherokee warriors were not seen on the warpath in the Southeast until the time of the American Civil War, when William Holland Thomas raised the Thomas Legion of Cherokee Indians and Highlanders to fight for the Confederacy, though warriors from the Cherokee Nation, East did travel to the lands of the Old Settlers in Arkansas Territory (or Cherokee Nation, West) to assist them in their wars against the Osage. With one notable exception: in 1830, the State of Georgia seized land in its south that had belonged to the Cherokee since the end of the Creek War, land separated from the rest of the Cherokee Nation by a large section of Georgia territory, and began to parcel it out to settlers. Major Ridge dusted off his weapons and led a party of thirty south, where they drove the settlers out of their homes on what the Cherokee considered their land, and burned all buildings to the ground, but harmed no one.

cots and other Europeans among the Cherokee

The traders and British government agents dealing with the Southern tribes in general and the Chickamauga in particular were nearly all of Scottish extraction, especially from the Highlands, though a few were Scots-Irish, English, French, even German (see Scottish Indian trade). Many of these married women from their host people and remained after the fighting had ended, some fathering children who would later become significant leaders. Notable traders, agents, and refugee Tories among the Chickamauga Cherokee included John Stuart, Henry Stuart, Alexander Cameron, John McDonald, Clement Vann, James Vann, John Joseph Vann, Daniel Ross (father of John Ross), John Walker Sr., John McLemore (father of Bob), William Buchanan, John Elliot, John Watts (father of the chief), James Grant, John D. Chisholm, John Benge (father of Bob Benge), Thomas Brown, Arthur Coody, John Fields, John Thompson, Richard Taylor, Edward Adair (Irish), John Rogers (Welsh), John Gunter (German), Ned Sizemore (Anglo-Cherokee), Peter Hildebrand (German), George Colbert (French), and William Thorp (English), among many others.

In contrast, a large portion of the settlers encroaching on their territories and against whom the Chickamauga took most of their actions were Scots-Irish, Irish from Ulster of Scottish descent, a group which also provided the backbone for the forces of the Revolution. It is a historical irony that those from a group seen as rebels or "Whigs" back home in the Isles became Tories in the Americas while those from a group now considered one of the most "Tory" in regards to the United Kingdom became Whigs in the Americas.

Origin of the words "Chickamauga" and "Chattanooga"

According to Mooney, the word "Chickamauga", pronounced Tsi-ka-ma-gi in Cherokee, was the name of at least two places: a headwater creek of the Chattahoochee River, and the above-mentioned region near Chattanooga, but the word is not Cherokee. He states that Chickamauga may be derived from Shawnee, and indeed there is/was a small town on the coast of North Carolina near Cape Hatteras (noted for a small battle that took place there early in the American Civil War) called Chicamacomico (meaning "dwelling place by the big water"), which is also the name of a river in Maryland. Both these areas were originally inhabited by tribes speaking variations of the Algonquin family of languages, of which Shawnee is one example. The Shawnee connection to the area should not be taken lightly, as the crossing of the Hiwassie River near Hiwassie Old Town in Polk County, Tennessee is known as Savannah Crossing, "Savannnah" being a corruption of "Shawnee".

In addition to the Tennessee city of Chattanooga, which was gets its name from a non-Cherokee word for Lookout Mountain, a community named Chattanooga Valley in Georgia lies just south of the Tennessee city. There is a community of Chattanooga in Mercer County, Ohio, possibly a legacy of the Cherokee who lived there and fought alongside the Shawnee, but more likely a legacy of the Delaware or later Shawnee who lived much longer in that area. True, there is also a town called Chattanooga in the former territory of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, not surprising since southeast Tennessee was the last home of the Cherokee in the East, but there is a town called Chattanooga in Colorado, a legacy of the Silver Rush, which has no connection to the Cherokee but does lie in the later territory of the Cheyenne confederacy of three Algonquin tribes.

A logical conclusion from all the above is that both place-names in Hamilton County, Tennessee--Chickamauga and Chattanooga--derive from the Algonquin language of the Shawnee.

On the other hand, Brown states that Chickamauga comes from the Muskogean "Chukko-mah-ko" for "dwelling place of the warchief", and Evans seems to agree, stating "The name comes from the Cherokee attempt to say Muskogee "Chiaha Olamico" which means 'The Upper Chiefdom'", and that "Tsika-magi was the way the Cherokees attempted to pronounce the Muskogee words."

References

*Alderman, Pat. "Dragging Canoe: Cherokee-Chickamauga War Chief". (Johnson City: Overmountain Press, 1978)
*Brown, John P. "Old Frontiers". (Kingsport: Southern Publishers, 1938).
*Eckert, Allan W. "A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh". (New York: Bantam, 1992).
*Evans, E. Raymond. "Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Ostenaco". "Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1", pp. 41-54. (Cherokee: Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 1976).
*Evans, E. Raymond. "Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Bob Benge". "Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2", pp. 98-106. (Cherokee: Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 1976).
*Evans, E. Raymond. "Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Dragging Canoe". "Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2", pp. 176-189. (Cherokee: Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 1977).
*Evans, E. Raymond, and Vicky Karhu. "Williams Island: A Source of Significant Material in the Collections of the Museum of the Cherokee". "Journal of Cherokee Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1", pp. 10-34. (Cherokee: Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 1984).
*Haywood, W.H. "The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796". (Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Publishing House, 1891).
*Klink, Karl, and James Talman, ed. "The Journal of Major John Norton". (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970).
*McLoughlin, William G. "Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic". (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
*Mooney, James. "Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee". (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers, 1982).
*Moore, John Trotwood and Austin P. Foster. "Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 1". (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1923).
*Ramsey, James Gettys McGregor. "The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century". (Chattanooga: Judge David Campbell, 1926).
*Wilkins, Thurman. "Cherokee Tragedy". (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970).

ee also

*Timeline of Cherokee removal

External links

* [http://www.cherokee.org The Cherokee Nation]
* [http://www.unitedkeetoowahband.org/ United Keetoowah Band]
* [http://www.cherokee-nc.com/ Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (official site)]
* [http://fax.libs.uga.edu/J84xSIx2x1xv19a/ Annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1897/98: pt.1)] , Contains The Myths of The Cherokee, by James Mooney
* [http://www.muscogeenation-nsn.gov/ Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma (official site)]
* [http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/5/25/nashville_now_and_then_large_and_in_charge Account of 1786 conflicts] between Nashville-area settlers and natives (second item in historical column)