By BARBARA R. DUNCAN
(Note: The Cherokee syllabary in the column title translates as: Aniyvwiya Degohusdi Dunadvnele’i Didanohesgo’I, “We are telling some things Cherokees did.”)
South Carolina militia begins invading Lower Towns. Cherokees fight for homeland and sovereignty.
In 1776, the Cherokee Lower Towns clustered along rivers that rushed down from the mountains: the Chattuga, Tugaloo, Keowee, and Broad, which create the Savannah River. On these headwaters, towns were home to more than 500 warriors and three to five thousand Cherokees. Trading paths ran directly southeast to Charles Town, and northeast into Virginia. Until the Treaty of 1755, Cherokee territory had extended southeast almost to the coast.
The American campaigns of 1776, however, violated treaty lines. Patriot militia from Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina converged on the Cherokee Nation, intending to “extirpate” them completely or at least remove them beyond the Mississippi. Settlers had already violated those lines and had been warned to leave.
Cherokee policy was usually to pursue peace and to preserve lives. Tohi—peacefulness or harmony—was the most desirable condition. Cherokees went to war to revenge the death of Cherokees, taking revenge on the same number of their enemy as the number of Cherokees killed. Then tohi was restored. They did not go to war to wipe out other nations. James Adair, a trader who lived with them, said:
“The Indians are not fond of waging war with each other, unless prompted by some of the traders: when left to themselves, they consider with the greatest exactness and foresight, all the attending circumstances of war.”
Often messengers negotiated peaceful solutions. Sometimes stickball games settled disputes. But once Cherokees decided on war, they were fierce and formidable.
Cherokees had received intelligence from the delegation of northern Indians about what the Virginians were doing, and they had accepted the wampum belts declaring war. They had reports from their own people who were hunting, trading, and traveling. British Indian agents among them provided news of Patriot plans.
In July 1776, the Cherokees had about three thousand warriors, in about 40 towns, in a territory of more than 80,000 square miles (about the size of Kansas today.) The Patriots were planning to send six thousand men against them.
Against greater numbers, Cherokees always used traditional strategies of surprise, ambush, fighting while retreating, and using terrain as a weapon. Their overall policy—common among most tribes—was to preserve life. Every life was valued. A successful war leader protected Cherokee women, children, and elders and brought all the warriors home.
Cherokee warriors had already been raiding illegal settlers near the Lower Towns. On June 26, they attacked a military force led by James McCall (in present-day Pickens County.) On July 1, they killed settlers in present-day Oconee County. Both were within Cherokee boundaries. On July 15, eight-eight Cherokees and one hundred and two British Loyalists–dressed and painted as Cherokees- led by Captain David Fanning attacked Lyndley’s Fort, where Patriots from settlements along the Saluda River had gathered. Militia –about 150 men under Captain Jonathan Downs- had arrived just the day before. Both sides exchanged fire, and a few were wounded on each side. (This is in present-day Laurens, South Carolina, just inside the boundary of land taken in the Treaty of 1755.)
Dragging Canoe, Tsiyu Gansini, although wounded at the Battle of Island Flats, joined with Alexander Cameron, Skatsi, his adopted brother and the British Indian agent, to lead Cherokee forces against the South Carolinians. Williamson had about 1,100 men at this time, including Samuel Jack’s troops. They were not seasoned fighters. In order to get volunteers, South Carolina offered a bounty of 75 pounds for every Cherokee scalp and 100 pounds for every Cherokee prisoner brought in alive. In today’s dollars, 100 pounds would be about $25,000 dollars. Or, the soldiers could keep the Cherokee captives, along with any captured African-Americans, as their own personal slaves.
On Aug. 1, militia proceeded towards the Lower Towns. On the way, they burned Cameron’s plantation, Lochaber, and took all his livestock and slaves. Cameron also had a Cherokee wife and children. Militia burned Esseneca (present-day Clemson SC.) Troops proceeded north to the ruins of Fort Prince George, which had stood empty since 1768, across the river from the town of Keowee, also deserted.
Williamson sent out Col. Leroy Hammond with a large group of mounted rangers to capture Cameron and Dragging Canoe, who were supposedly camping nearby. As Hammond and rangers were fording the river, Cherokees opened fire on them from the seemingly deserted town. Heavy fire killed a number of rangers and horses, and the surprised men were running when Hammond rallied them for a charge directly into the town. While the Cherokees concentrated fire on them, Williamson’s other troops were able to escape.
By Aug. 8, Williamson claimed to have burned Brass Town, Cheowee, Estatoe, Jocassee, Keowee, and Sugar Town. Each town was surrounded by hundreds of acres of cornfields, gardens, and orchards. Storehouses held food harvested for the winter. Women, children, and elders had already gone to live safely in the woods until danger was past. Patriot troops burned houses, burned or tramped fields, took food for their provisions and cut down orchards. They attempted to take scalps and prisoners. At the same time, Cherokee warriors were watching them, sniping at them, killing isolated soldiers, stealing their horses, and targeting their pack train of supplies and ammunition.
On Aug. 10, Cherokees attacked Pickens’ small group of militia while they were crossing the Tugaloo River. Pickens went on to burn Tugaloo and Estatoe.
On Aug. 12, about 200 Cherokees led by Dragging Canoe and Cameron attacked Pickens and 25 militia. The outnumbered militia made two circles, with one circle firing as the other reloaded, taking turns. They were able to hold off the Cherokees until relieved by Williamson’s larger force. This became known as the Battle of the Ring. Williamson and Pickens went on to burn the town of Tomassey that same day.
On Aug. 15, Williamson declared that he had completed the destruction of the Lower Towns. He and his troops retreated to Esseneca, where they built a small log structure they named Fort Rutledge, after the Governor of South Carolina. For two weeks they camped, gathering additional troops and awaiting supplies of food and ammnunition. By September 1, Williamson had gathered about 2000 troops, including Catawba scouts, Samuel Jack’s Georgia men, and others.
Williamson was an illiterate Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in the Anglo-Cherokee War 1760-61, providing beef and other supplies to the British Army. By 1776 he owned a plantation, thousands of acres, and slaves. In addition to other crops, his peach orchards produced three thousand bushels of peaches every year. By the end of the Revolutionary War, his fortunes and land holdings increased.
Cherokees did not return and rebuild the Lower Towns. They had been burned in 1760 and again in 1761, just after a smallpox epidemic in 1759. So, in 1776, they left the headwaters of the Savannah and took refuge in the Middle, Valley, and Overhill Towns. They also settled in some of old towns to the west–along the Tennessee River (in what’s now northern Alabama) like Willstown. In 1796, a child in Willstown becoming hysterical at the sight of a white man, twenty years after the destruction of the Lower Towns.
Cherokees did regroup, resupply, help refugees, and prepare to fight the next invasion. Alexander Cameron rejoined the British in Florida, and Dragging Canoe returned to the Overhills. Griffith Rutherford and the North Carolina militia were on their way….
SOURCES:
James Adair, History of the American Indians, ed. Kathryn Braund (Tuscaloosa: University of Alamaba Press, 2005.)
- Raymond Evans, “Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Dragging Canoe” Journal of Cherokee Studies Vol. II No. 1 Winter 1977, pp. 176-189. tk
John L. Nichols, “Alexander Cameron, British Agent Among the Cherokee 1764-1781,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, April 1996 Vol. 97 No. 2 pp. 94-114.
Charles Royce, “A Map of the Territorial Limits of the Cherokee Nation,” 1884. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3861e.np000155/?r=0.655,0.682,0.178,0.096,0
“CPI Inflation Calculator” https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1776
E.F. Rockwell, “Parallel and Combined Expeditions Against the Cherokee Indians in South and in North Carolina in 1776,” Historical Magazine, October 1867, pp. 212-220.
“South Carolina in the Revolutionary War.” Carolana https://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/
South Carolina Historical Markers, Fort Lyndley. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=12102
